


Above, Below (Through the Cracks)

by doodle



Category: Neverwhere - Neil Gaiman, Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Crossover, Dark, First Meetings, London Below, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-27
Updated: 2011-11-27
Packaged: 2017-10-26 14:34:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 38,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/284409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doodle/pseuds/doodle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>London is a city with two faces. There is Above and there is Below. And Below is the city of people who have fallen through the cracks, the lost, the forgotten and the broken.</i></p><p>John Watson returns to London from the war, broken and lost until fate leads him to a man who calls himself the consulting detective and the mercenaries who are hunting him. As the result of a single act of kindness John finds himself pulled in the strange, and wonderful, world of Below as the consulting detective attempts to get to safety and solve the string of violent deaths plaguing Below before he is next.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Above, Below (Through the Cracks)

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the [holmes_big_bang](http://holmes-big-bang.livejournal.com/) challenge and with the _Neverwhere_ book in mind (Gaiman's preferred text). However, you do not need to have read any of the Neverwhere versions, or seen the original BBC series to understand, or enjoy, the story. If you are familiar with the source material for the fusion you'll find a few references (I hope) you'll enjoy.
> 
> Thank you to _alizarin_nyc_ for the beta and cheerleading, and to my artist _sunryder_ for the wonderful, and beautifully atmospheric art [here.](http://sunryder.livejournal.com/7779.html#cutid1)

John Hamish Watson was 34.

Until six months ago he’d been a doctor.

In the army.

Serving in Afghanistan.

Then he’d been shot by the Taliban. He tried not to take it personally, they’d been shooting at everybody, after all, and he wasn’t the only one they’d hit. There’d been treatment in the field and a stay in the RAMC Medical Centre at Camp Bastion, but it hadn’t been enough. Four weeks after he’d been the only man on his patrol to be shot _and_ survive he’d been shipped back to England.

With a hole in his shoulder and a limp that they told him was PTSD - and he said was a load of gumpf - Doctor John Watson was invalided out of the British Army. Apparently the Army didn't need a doctor with an intermittent but uncontrollable tremor in his dominant hand.

John had known he’d never be a surgeon again, that he’d never be able to work in A&E. Worst of all, he’d be lucky if he could even get a job as a GP.

So he had gravitated towards London. His sister Harry had begged him to move close to her, and while he liked to keep the peace by letting her think that was the reason, it wasn’t. London was the only place that came close to feeling like it might be home in the crushing wake of his loss. He’d _belonged_ in the army and without it he was lost. 

The rush of the city had been comforting to John when he’d gone to University nearly ten years ago. Both his parents were dead and his sister was already on her way to drinking too much and the city had swallowed him whole and made him feel _alive_. St. Bart’s had become like a second home as he studied, the staff a new family that supported and encouraged him and smiled proudly when he went to war.

There was nothing left in Doncaster, his childhood home, and there hadn’t been for years. He didn’t know his family in Scotland, he wasn’t even sure they still lived in Edinburgh where he’d visited them once as a boy. London had been the only place for him to go, even if it was going to be a struggle on his Army pension.

And a struggle it was.

John lived in Battersea, in a flat approximately the same dimensions as a shoebox. The only thing that stopped John’s flat from being a bedsit, other than the Landlord’s creative labelling skills, was the fact that he had his own bathroom. There wasn’t room to swing a cat in the cramped, always muggy and slightly damp room but it was _his_. It had been his only requirement for life outside the Army. After years of having to share bathrooms with more than a couple of other blokes John Watson was determined to be able to have a bath, shower, or even just a piss in peace.

However, taking the bathroom out of the equation, the dirty beige, run down little flat made his tent in Afghanistan seem positively palatial in comparison. When he was not enjoying a bath in peace John hated the place with a deep, heavy weight inside his chest. The dull walls, adorned with only a few photographs from his tour and one of his parents, Harry and himself on the beach at Skegness back when he and Harry were young and they were all happy, seemed like a prison.

It had taken John a month stuck in the flat to start losing his marbles. The hunt for a new job was both arduous and humiliating, being turned down at every corner. Even the desperately understaffed GP surgeries weren’t interested in him, a man trained for combat wasn’t _the right fit_ for children with runny noses and pensioners who were _a bit under the weather, deary_.

With nothing better to do he had started exploring London. At first he went to all the clichéd free tourist attractions he’d eschewed during his Uni years and medical training. He walked around the museums of London until his feet were sore and his leg ached and then he’d get up the next morning, stare at his beige walls over his cup of tea and go out to do it all again.

He learnt that the he didn’t understand Modern Art and while the Tate Modern was a very nice building, he wasn’t too keen on what they kept inside it. The British Museum took over two weeks to properly investigate and wanted an extortionate one-fifty off him to look after his slightly soggy coat. When the weather was nice he enjoyed sitting on the Southbank watching the world go by and occasionally nipping into the National Theatre to listen to the free music. He was drawn back to the Hunterian Museum four times, the lines of jars fascinating if occasionally stomach turning. Even as an army doctor, a syphilitic penis wasn’t something he ever really needed to see more than once, especially not preserved in a jar.

Tourist London lost its appeal eventually. The heat of the summer and throng of children and their parents crowding the streets of the centre of town as the school holidays hit drove John back. He returned to wasting away his days in his flat, the air stifling and oppressive in the heat wave, and tried not lament his lost life. If he thought about it for too long, the dreams and nightmares of sand and dry heat and blood and gunfire, he’d really lose it. It got harder by the day.

The heat eventually broke and as summer moved into autumn the streets cleared as much as they ever would. John started to look at his service handgun – illegally kept – with contemplation, and then what he realised in complete horror, was longing.

//

The first thing Sherlock noticed was the smell of blood, sharp and metallic against the back of his throat. It overpowered his senses.

It was everywhere. He was too late. _Again_.

The Lady Bethnal was sprawled across the dirty floor, the electric green of her dress and hair were fanned out around her in the pool of red. Her eyes were open, staring lifelessly at the roof of the tunnel in horror, the once bright and vibrant emerald, already dull and starting to cloud.

Sherlock was no stranger to death. No stranger to unpleasant and painful and horrible death. The site before him still made his empty stomach churn and heave.

Bethnal had been gutted. Filleted from throat to pelvis, her insides hanging out in a way that wasn’t just unnatural because they weren’t _inside_ anymore. They’d been arranged. They’d been _played with_.

Sherlock swallowed down the bile threatening to rise up his throat. It was not the time to start getting emotional, to stop thinking about the facts, the plan, the _chase_.

There was a noise at the end of the tunnel, deep in the dark where the stone was cold and damp and old. Two sets of footsteps, walking almost idly. They were letting him know they were coming.

Sherlock hadn’t slept in four days, hadn’t eaten in two. His body was rapidly approaching limits he had not tested in over five years. Limits he had not tested since the drugs, since the withdrawal.

He had not planned on testing them again but he didn’t have any choice.

Turning, he ran. Towards light. Towards air.

 _Above_.

//

John had not been out of the flat that day. It was grey and drizzly and generally foul outside but he was suddenly in desperate need to get out from inside his horrible four walls. He put on a jacket, grabbed his cane and went to the newsagents that occupied the ground floor of the building next door. The Rajit’s were the hardest working people John had ever known in England and somehow were always happy to see him.

The bell above the door rang as John pushed it open and stepped inside. “Hello,” he said with as much of a smile as he was able to muster. His shoulder had started aching as soon as he stepped outside, the low steady throb that always came with the rain. 

“Good evening, doctor,” Mr Rajit greeted him cheerfully in return. Behind the counter his daughter, a toddler wrapped up in a bright pink puffa jacket and matching hat and mittens waved up at him from her playpen.

John warmed a little at the toothy smile she offered him and waved back.

“Busy day?” Mr Rajit asked as John browsed the shelves and stands.

“A bit,” John lied. He was unable to tell Mr Rajit, who was up at three every morning for the shop, the most taxing thing he’d done all day was get up to change the channel for Homes Under the Hammer when he couldn’t find the remote.

They exchanged genial but idle chitchat as John picked up a few items, some more milk, a newspaper, a packet of chocolate digestives and a large bar of fruit and nut. He didn’t really want anything else, but he kept looking anyway. He added a pot noodle to his haul, even though he hated them. Anything to delay going back to the flat for as long as possible.

As Mr Rajit offered to have Mrs Rajit bring him up a spot of her spicy dhal at teatime, John was hit with the full force of just how _empty_ his existence had become. If he were to fall off the face of the earth the only people likely to miss him would be the Rajits, and that would probably take a while.

Coupled with his slowly building insanity in the flat, it was a deeply, darkly depressing thought. Whatever London had been to him once, whatever comfort it had offered it was failing to give him again.

He was just as lost as the day he’d taken off his uniform for the last time.

//

The first breath of fresh air burned Sherlock's lungs. It was damp, but crisp Above as he heaved in deep, gasping breaths. The dull, grey light stung his eyes and his pupils contracted sharply against the burn to his retinas. It was nothing compared to the pain in his shoulder, which throbbed and pulsed as though it were on fire.

He stumbled down the nameless church’s stone steps, forcing his feet not to drag or trip. Blood dripped on the ground from his wound and the handle of the knife was still protruding from the back of his jacket.

There wasn't time to stop, time to adjust. The heavy oak and iron doors shut behind him with a shuddering thud. Attempting to lock or bar them would do no good. It would take too long with only one properly functioning arm and would lose him time rather than gain it.

Moriarty and Moran were still coming, toying with him as they closed the gap between hunters and prey. Being Above would only offer protection for a short while, and only a little of it at best.

At their current rate of gain they would have him in less than twenty minutes.

He jumped the fence around the church with great difficulty and a cry of agony as pain sparked hot and sharp through his shoulder. The pedestrians on the street hurried past him huddled beneath their umbrellas with collars upturned. Not one of them noticed him. None of them questioned what he’d been doing, if he was all right, why he’d been stabbed. Not even the off duty policeman.

Sherlock forged on. There wasn’t time to lament why he never came Above, the people that had looked through him often enough to force him through the cracks. There was only one chance.

He had to get to Mycroft.

If anyone could help him, if anyone had the strength of mind to really _see_ him again it would be his brother. The brother he’d idolised as a child, who had always been more brilliant than Sherlock could have dreamed. The brother he had so desperately wanted to impress, to _be_ until Mycroft had turned into their father, all secret handshakes and influential whispers behind closed doors.

If it worked, if Mycroft could still be the boy Sherlock remembered wanting the approval of, he might make it. Mycroft was the only person who might be able to offer him a safe harbour for long enough to allow him to _solve this_.

The rain was like ice on Sherlock’s skin, seeping through his clothes to chill his exhausted, weary bones. He made his way towards the river and hoped the rain might cover his tracks, give him just a little longer before they caught him.

He fell.

The pavement was cold and rough beneath his palms. The knife shifted. Someone screamed and blood mixed pink in the rain.

Sherlock’s world went black.

//

John said goodbye to Mr Rajit once he’d browsed for too long in the small shop, paid for all the things he didn’t need and had them put in a blue carrier bag. The bell above the door tinkled again as he stepped outside into what had become a bloody awful downpour.

He turned the corner, planning on going straight back up to his flat when he saw it. A great black heap in the middle of the pavement, twenty or so yards away from his front door.

Somewhere in the distance thunder rumbled.

As he approached the black mass he realised it wasn’t an abandoned bin liner full of rubbish. It was a person, a man, and there was a knife sticking out the back of his shoulder.

“Shit,” John cursed loudly. Now that he looked he could see blood dripping from the wound, pink trickles mixed with rainwater ran across the pavement and into the drain.

The man was clearly tall, but lean, curled up and collapsed on his knees. He was soaked to the bone. John was on the pavement next to him in an instant, cane and shopping forgotten as he pressed two fingers to the man’s neck. He didn’t know he’d been holding his breath until he found a pulse, weak but _there_ , and the tightness around his chest eased a little.

Years of training kicked in without having to think about it. John pulled off his jacket and wrapped it around the man’s trembling shoulders, considering the risks and merits of trying to move him inside until an ambulance arrived.

The man’s head snapped up. A crown of messy, black, soaking wet curls gave way to a pale and angular, but _stunning_ face with piercing blue eyes full of accusation.

“It’s okay,” John assured, hands raised in supplication. “I’m a doctor, I’m trying to help you. Can you walk?”

“No,” the man said, his voice hoarse but full of a fear John knew too well. Remembered from the war. “ _No_ help.”

“You’ve been stabbed,” John told him, though he realised the man probably already knew that. Unless he was well on his way to hypothermia and _everything_ hurt, the knife in his shoulder would be causing him a lot of bother. “We need to get you inside, then get you to hospital.”

“No!” The man shouted, attempting to scrabble away from John but not getting far. “No hospitals, no hospitals,” he repeated, frantic and terrified eyes scanning the street as though he were looking for an escape. Then his injured arm gave out from under him and with a cry of pain, he crumpled back onto the pavement.

The man was out cold again.

Lightning flashed and barely a second later the thunder rumbled again. The storm was overhead.

John picked the man up, not an easy task considering his size, and took him inside. He didn’t call an ambulance, or the police.

//

John moved on autopilot.

He laid the still unconscious man out across the sofa, resting his head on one of the cushions. The man stirred as John pressed a clean tea towel around the hilt of the knife where blood was still steadily oozing from around the wound. His eyes fluttered and he let out a low groan.

“Sorry,” John muttered. It was only going to get worse.

The man was shivering, he was probably already in shock and his clothes were soaked through. John couldn’t help but stop and stare for a moment at what he was wearing. He looked like he’d wandered off the set of the sort of Regency period drama his mother used to love watching when she was sick.

The man gave another pained groan and John set back to work. He stripped the madly dressed stranger of his shoes and almost impossibly tight trousers quickly and clinically. His top half wasn’t so easy. The clothes were dirty and well worn and John didn’t want to cut them off with nothing to offer him in exchange that would fit.

John unbuttoned his black tailcoat, deep blue waistcoat with red edging and black fitted shirt and removed each layer from the man’s right side. Then covered him to the waist in the spare blanket John kept under the bed.

“Be right back,” John said into the silence before getting up from where he’d been sitting on the coffee table.

He collected his medical kit from where it had been packed away in the back of his wardrobe, not used since his move to London. Then in the kitchen he washed his hands twice, filled a bowl with warm water, a clean cloth and a healthy splash of dettol disinfectant.

John put on a pair of surgical gloves and with the steadiest hands he’d possessed since his return, sat the stranger up against him and removed the knife. The man awoke, with a gasp and then a low shout of pain that was universal as his whole body tensed against John’s.

“It’s okay,” John soothed, pressing a clean towel to the wound as it started to bleed more freely. “I’m trying to help you.”

“Who are you?” the man asked, voice rough but confident.

“I’m a doctor,” John explained. Keeping the pressure on the wound with one hand, John was glad to see the knife was only about three inches long. The damage would be limited and hopefully easy to fix. “If you don’t want to go to hospital you’re going to have to lay on your front, you need stitches.”

“Why are you helping me?” the man questioned as he complied, the muscles in his jaw tensing visibly as he turned onto his front. John helped him settle into a comfortable, but correct position and stripped him of the rest of his clothes.

“Because I’m a doctor,” John told him. “Though if I was a good one, I would have taken you to a hospital.”

“ _No_ hospitals,” the man growled, attempting to push himself up but crying out in pain again.

“Don’t be stupid,” John said, holding him down firmly but carefully. “If I was going to take you to a hospital I would have done it while you were out cold and couldn’t complain. Now, hold still. This is going to hurt.”

John didn’t have anything to numb the pain, not even a tube of lidocaine to take the edge off. The man buried his face in John’s ratty old sofa cushion and stayed there, silent other than occasional muffled groans of pain as John cleaned and then closed the wound with five neat stitches.

“You need to keep this clean,” John instructed as he dressed the wound with gauze and then a carefully wrapped bandage. “Or it’ll get infected. I don’t have any antibiotics I can give you, though I’ve got some savalon that’ll help.”

John waited for an answer, but it never came. Panic flared, hot and fast in his chest as he fumbled for a pulse. He found it quickly, the slow and steady throb of the stranger’s heartbeat reassuring beneath his fingers.

He’d just passed out again.

John looked at the clock. It was just after five and Mrs Rajit would be up in an hour or so with the dhal. Other than that, there was nothing else that needed his attention.

He moved the injured man to his bed. It wouldn’t do to leave him on the now soaking wet sofa to catch pneumonia as well, and it wasn’t as if he could send him back to the streets in his condition.

//

When Sherlock woke he was warm, dry and sleeping in a real bed. This was a combination of events that he hadn’t experienced in some time, weeks, maybe even months.

He was instantly alert.

The doctor sat on the sofa, his breathing and the way his head nodded up and down suggested he was dozing, but only lightly and he hadn’t been at it for long. It wouldn’t take a great deal to wake him up and that was the last thing Sherlock wanted. The longer he stayed with the doctor, the more danger Sherlock was putting him in. Dragging him into the deep, dark mess of the Underside would be poor thanks for saving Sherlock’s life.

He intended to get up, silently, and leave. Once he was outside the small flat he could vanish back into London Below easily, and quickly, enough that the doctor would not be able to follow even if he were so inclined. Something Sherlock doubted, as there was only so far good Samaritans would go without reward, a lesson he’d learnt long ago.

Only there were two problems with his course of action, the first being that he hadn’t been redressed and was wearing nothing under the duvet other than his underwear. The second being that when Sherlock tried to sit up pain flared through his shoulder, a white-hot burn beneath the clean bandages and he was unable to contain his cry.

The doctor’s head snapped up and Sherlock could tell he was wide-awake and alert in an instant. The doctor stood, then reached for his cane, and it became blindingly apparent why. He was in the army. Or he had been, before he was shot in combat. His wound was in his shoulder and the limp he was walking towards Sherlock with was in his head.

There was a time when Sherlock would have been able to tell which war, now all he knew was the Underside’s battles. He didn’t even know what countries the ‘Empire’ was at war with anymore.

“You’re awake,” the doctor said, stating the obvious as he came to stand beside the bed.

Sherlock bristled, though he was able to bite his tongue against an insulting reply. “How long?” He asked instead. The time itself was of little relevance, it didn’t move in the same ways Below as it did Above. When everything was lit by lamplight the rising and the setting of the sun meant precious little.

What he did need to know was how long Moriarty and Moran had been looking for him while he had not been making any active attempts to avoid them. His hair was still slightly damp and he remembered the rain, and being so wet it felt as though he were soaked through to the bone. It had been some time and while no more than six hours it was still too long even though the rain would lend him a little added protection from Moriarty and Moran. It would wash away evidence of his presence, tucked away in the flat of someone from Above. He was by no means impossible to find, but perhaps it was still difficult enough now to give him the chance he required if he left quickly.

It was a shame he couldn’t stay. There weren’t many better places to hide, at least for a short while. Especially with the doctor, who years and years ago, was the sort of man Sherlock would have wanted to try and take to his bed. As the situation stood, it was all the more reason to leave rather than one to stay.

The doctor looked at the clock on the wall, it read eight forty-three and judging by the lack of light coming from behind the curtains it was the eight at night not in the morning.  Sherlock remembered the daylight burning his eyes when he came out of the church.

“Nearly five hours since I found you,” the doctor said before sitting on the bed next to Sherlock. “How’s the shoulder?”

“Painful, but acceptable,” Sherlock answered. He studied the lines of the doctor’s face and it was impossible to tell his age. His face was obviously deceptive and Sherlock imagined he was very good at poker. “Where are my clothes?”

The doctor pointed to the other side of the room, where Sherlock’s clothes hung along the small radiator next to the sofa. It was impossible to tell from his current location if they were fully dry yet or not. “I put them through the wash for you. Got most of the blood out and they’ll be dry by morning.”

Braving wet clothes didn’t cause Sherlock any sort of concern. It might have, once, but there were more pressing matters at hand. The journey to Mycroft was more likely to kill him than catching something from damp clothing.

"Thank you," Sherlock said, belatedly, and trusted the doctor to understand it wasn't just for cleaning his clothes.

"It was nothing, really," the doctor said as if what he'd done really was nothing, as if it wasn't the first act of genuine and selfless human kindness Sherlock had experienced in over ten years. “What’s your name?” 

For just a moment, as Sherlock stared into the doctor’s warm and curious face, he wished he could tell him. “I don’t have a name,” he lied, swallowing down the urge, which was both stupid and dangerous.  

“Don’t be daft." The doctor's face lit up in amusement as he chuckled. "Everyone has a name. I'm John. John Watson.”

“I don’t,” Sherlock said, simply. It had been a lesson quickly learned, even before he fell through the cracks. Don't give anyone anything they can use against you, no matter how much you think you can trust them.

Victor taught him that Above, promising him the world and leaving him with nothing when prettier, more easily led young things crossed his path. Molly had reinforced it Below, using his own desperate desire for knowledge to trap him until he’d clawed himself free of her. 

Doctor Watson frowned in obvious confusion, and pressed. “But what do people call you?”

“I don’t interact with people that often,” Sherlock snapped, wanting the discussion – and temptation – to end. The less the doctor knew the better. "Not that it's any of your business."

“I’m beginning to understand why you don't interact with people," Doctor Watson shot back, quickly but perfectly calmly and Sherlock blinked in surprise. "But I think you'll find it _is_ my business, seeing as I didn't take you to the hospital and you're sleeping in my bed. The least you can do is tell me something I can call you. Unless you'd rather be _Oi you_?"

Sherlock studied Doctor Watson for a long moment, unable to stop the corners of his lips curving into a smirk. Not only did the good doctor put Sherlock’s wishes over common sense, but he wasn’t cowed by Sherlock's caustic nature. Instead of pressing for something Sherlock refused to give, he requested something he might.

“There are people who refer to me as the consulting detective,” Sherlock found himself offering. It was the best he could give, considering they would never see each other again.  

It went down as well as could be expected Above.

“The consulting detective?” he asked, with an incredulous laugh.

Sherlock made a noise of agreement. “Because of what I do.”

“You’re a detective without a name?” Doctor Watson confirmed with a smirk and a spark of amusement in his eyes.

“In a manner of speaking yes, and as grateful as I am for your help, I have to leave,” Sherlock declared, putting paid to any further notions of gallantry Doctor Watson was harbouring and any ridiculous ideas of his own about staying a while longer. 

Doctor Watson's bearing when he stood, walked and even sat screamed at least ten years with the army but there was something far too soft and almost mild mannered about the doctor for him to be any sort of threat. While he'd not been put off by Sherlock's earlier dismissal he'd calmly adjusted his question and not demanded what really he wanted to know. Doctor Watson was surely going to complain about his leaving, possibly make a fuss in regards to Sherlock’s health but would let him go all the same. The doctor hardly seemed a man made for confrontation, especially not with that psychosomatic limp.

"Is there any point trying to talk you out of it? It's a very bad idea, you know," Doctor Watson said calmly, with the sort of disapproving resignation that confirmed his deductions were correct.

Sherlock shook his head and Doctor Watson sighed, standing up with a suppressed groan. Sleeping upright on the sofa had clearly aggravated his shoulder wound and left him with a crick in his neck, but he didn't pass comment.

“Alright. If you want to go and I can’t stop you, remember to keep-”

“The wound clean, yes, I know,” Sherlock finished. Caring for his own injuries was nothing even close to new, even before he fell Below.

Pain shuddered through Sherlock as he went to stand, his arm moving instinctively to push himself off the bed.

“Let me give you something to help with the pain. I'll make you something to eat and a cup of tea while it kicks in, then you can go,” Doctor Watson said, attempting another compromise.

“I don’t take narcotics,” Sherlock said firmly. Of all the times for a relapse, now was not it. No matter how much Sherlock needed an edge, a boost, to help him try and stay alive. 

“Just a low dose of paracetamol, no opioids, nothing dangerous," Doctor Watson assured him, understanding his meaning. Surprisingly, there was no judgement in his eyes.

Sherlock moved to protest, but another stab of pain ran down his side and Doctor Watson didn't need to say _I told you so_. "If you want to be able to get dressed, then you’re going to need something to take the edge off.”

“A low dose,” Sherlock reluctantly conceded. It had been ten years since he had first taken cocaine and five since he’d last taken it or heroin. Nothing had passed his lips, been up his nose or gone into a vein since. He reasoned with himself that a mild analgesic was not the same thing as an opiate-based medication.

Taking it would allow him to leave, to be able to _run_.

//

John handed the _consulting detective_ two white, entirely harmless looking pills and trusted that he wouldn’t know any better. He stood by the edge of his bed and watched as he took them in one easy swallow, helped down with a mouthful of water.

Barely a minute had passed when his eyes started to look heavy, accusation under his dark lashes just before they closed and he slumped back. John reached forward and caught the consulting detective, saving him from a crack on the back of the skull courtesy of his headboard.

“For your own good,” John said, entirely unapologetically as he pulled the duvet back up under the consulting detective’s chin.

//

“You lied,” Sherlock stated when he came back to awareness. It was daylight in the small flat and judging by the dip in the bed he'd been stirring for some time as Doctor Watson was sat beside him once more. 

It only took a moment for Sherlock to remember swallowing the two white tablets Doctor Watson had assured him were paracetamol and the world becoming rapidly hazy. His last thought before medicated sleep had dragged him under was that Sherlock never would have predicted Doctor Watson would be such an accomplished liar.

The man in question leaned over, appearing in Sherlock's line of vision and looking entirely without remorse. “You needed more rest, not to be going off running around in the pouring rain with a hole in your shoulder.”

Sherlock was rapidly adjusting his initial assessment of Doctor Watson.

“You _lied_.”

Doctor Watson was not as mild mannered and _weak_ as Sherlock had initially believed. He was a skilled liar when suitably motivated, and in this case for what he believed to be Sherlock’s best interests. Doctor Watson was most likely in possession of a very strong moral code, but would lie when he deemed it was required. And lie _well_.

Doctor Watson simply smirked in amusement, helping Sherlock to sit up. “Interesting how you’re focusing on that rather than the fact that I drugged you, but alright. Yes, I lied.”

Sherlock watched the man who rescued him, the man who drugged him, intensely. It was impossible to tell what he was thinking. Despite the danger Sherlock was in, the further danger that Doctor Watson's actions had put them both in, he felt a thrill. Sherlock had misjudged the man and that was not an occurrence that happened often. It was far more interesting than being given sleeping pills.

“You lied and I didn’t know it," Sherlock finally declared as Doctor Watson started to squirm under his unwavering attention. "I _always_ know.”

“Apparently not," he replied with a shrug, as though what he had achieved was nothing. Sherlock was temporarily speechless. "Look, your clothes are dry, though I can’t imagine they’ll keep you very warm. Do you want a jumper? I have one that’s shrunk a bit so it shouldn’t be too big.”

“You’re throwing me out?” Sherlock asked, halfway between offended and incredulous, even if leaving sooner rather than later was the most sensible, and safest, option. Doctor Watson didn’t know that, he had _drugged_ Sherlock and now he was just going to kick him out?

Doctor Watson laid Sherlock’s clothes, and a heavy grey wool jumper over the duvet where it covered his legs, then patted the lump of his knee. “Thought you might want to make a quick escape, all things considered, but if you want to stay then you’re welcome. I’ve not got much but I think I can manage to rustle up some scrambled eggs on toast and tea, if you’d like.”

Sherlock’s stomach grumbled loudly before he could refuse. It was suddenly a choice between the lesser of two evils. Risk staying in one location even longer or leaving on a still empty stomach and taking the risks associated with blood loss, shock and lack of adequate nutrition.

“That settles that then, you get dressed and I’ll put the kettle on,” Doctor Watson said, taking the noises from Sherlock’s stomach as his answer. “Be careful of your stitches and let me know if you need any help.”

Sherlock watched Doctor Watson in his peripheral vision as he moved around the small kitchen area as the flat was suddenly filled with the sounds of kettle, toaster, gas flame and eggs being broken into a bowl. Sherlock turned his attention to the clothes in his lap and struggled into them.

It was shameful, how long it took him to dress, his shoulder sore and movement limited so as not to pull the stitches. As much as Sherlock desired to ignore Doctor Watson’s advice and do as he pleased, he could not afford to slow his healing time by reopening the stab wound.

The food and tea were waiting for Sherlock on the small two-person table in the corner of the kitchen area when he finally finished dressing himself, ignoring the offered grey jumper as an offence against clothing. As Sherlock took a seat and added two sugars to the cup of tea Doctor Watson pushed in front of him he felt the scrutiny his clothes were receiving under Doctor Watson’s stare.

“Last night you said you were a consulting detective. Is that like a private detective?” Doctor Watson asked, finally ending his intense study of Sherlock to add a substantial dollop of HP sauce to his plate.

Even though Doctor Watson was no longer watching Sherlock he couldn’t help but feel self-conscious of his appearance. It wasn’t something he had felt in a great deal of time, but he couldn’t ignore the question that had been in Doctor Watson’s eyes as he’d looked away.

Below, the rules were different as to what constituted fashion and Above, well, Doctor Watson was the first person to take any note of him Above since before he slipped through. Sat next to the doctor, who was wearing well-worn jeans and a cream cable knit jumper, Sherlock suddenly felt that his acceptable clothes from below were giving the wrong impression.

The impression that he wasn’t quite all there. When in fact he was more _there_ , at least mentally, than anyone Doctor Watson would ever meet.

“You might say that, yes. I used to work for the police.” As soon as the words left his mouth, Sherlock suspected proving himself was the reason he was attempting to show off in ways Doctor Watson would appreciate.

“I thought the police didn’t work with amateurs?” Doctor Watson questioned, not maliciously, only curiously with a slight wrinkle creasing his brow.

“I’m not an amateur,” Sherlock returned coolly. He ignored the part of him that said the less Doctor Watson knew the better, that he was being reckless and foolish and taking this route would only end badly. It only ever ended badly Above.

Then Doctor Watson smirked over the edge of his teacup and said, “Oh really?”

No matter how much Sherlock reminded himself that he did not find this in any way appealing and it did _not_ matter if Doctor Watson believed him it was of little use. He sat back and did it anyway.

“That you’re a doctor would have been easy, even if you hadn’t told me last night, as was confirming your profession,” Sherlock said and continued, ignoring the affronted look on the doctor’s face at the notion he’d lie about such a thing.

“The way you took care of me indicates a high level of medical training, not just first aid. The skill and confidence you demonstrated in the stitches says doctor, not nurse. However, you’re not your run of the mill NHS doctor, your posture screams army. You’d been in the service for at least ten years before you were invalided out. You received a shot to the shoulder and your limp is psychosomatic. You still have nightmares, most likely PTSD related. I don’t know where you served or where you were injured as my knowledge of current affairs is severely limited, but you’ve been back for six to nine months.

“Your parents are dead and you and your brother Harry aren’t close, some sort of falling out. You feel guilty regardless of whether you’re actually to blame and have refused his assistance. I generally don’t like to be so vague, however I’m working with limited resources.”

Doctor Watson was silent for what Sherlock knew must only have been a minute at most, but felt like a lifetime.

When he did such things Above, this was usually the part where he was either told to piss off or an attempt at physical violence was made. It only happened occasionally Below, most often after he had named a thief or a cheating husband. Otherwise his skills were met with vague interest towards their possible use, but generally, just plain indifference.

Once again Doctor Watson did not live up to Sherlock’s expectations. He broke out into a wide grin that lit up his eyes. “That was. _Wow_. That was brilliant.”

“Excuse me?” Even though the words matched up with the look on Doctor Watson’s face, it was still such a foreign reaction to Sherlock that he didn’t entirely trust it.

“That was _brilliant_ ,” Doctor Watson repeated a little breathlessly, ignoring his half eaten breakfast. “How did you do it?”

“I observe,” Sherlock answered simply, unsure how far the doctor’s interest would go. Only he sat there expectantly, sipping his tea as Sherlock finished the first hot meal he’d seen in weeks, until he _really_ explained.

“Your haircut and bearing tell me you were in the army, coupled with an estimate of your age tells me approximately ten years. You roll your right shoulder but not your left when you’re in pain, which tells me the ache you’re feeling is only in that area. Therefore it is the likely location of your wound, which is being aggravated by the damp weather – a common complaint. You limp when you walk but you don’t rest your weight on your cane when you stand still and you abandoned it while you were preparing breakfast, times when you’re not thinking about limping, which indicated there’s no real physical pain. There are scratches and dents in the paint beside the bed, some no less than two weeks old, which indicates a consistently troubled sleep.

“There is an old picture of you, your parents and your brother on holiday on the wall. It’s the only family picture you have but it tells me you have a brother, as it says _Michael, Karen, Harry and John, Skegness_ at the bottom. You have no other items associated with family, the rest of your personal items are in relation to your time in the army and your regiment, meaning you are either estranged or they’re not alive. Given your age the odds are that your brother is still alive, therefore you’re estranged. Your flat is small and run down in one of the cheaper areas of London, most of the furniture is old or second hand except for the television. You’re a wounded man who has failed to replace a mattress with poor back support, yet you have an extravagant television that is too large for the flat, let alone the living area. It was a gift and you’ve kept it, though you could sell it for profit and make do with less because of your feelings of guilt over the estrangement. It was possibly a peace offering on your return, but that is simply conjecture.”

Doctor Watson’s face was awash with emotions, though he kept returning to a mixture of surprise and awe.

“Did he disapprove of you going to war?” Sherlock wondered aloud.

“Yes. I don’t think Harry will ever forgive me for joining the army,” John answered quickly, with only a flash of something Sherlock suspected to be sadness in his eyes before returning to awe. Sherlock’s heartbeat quickened against his will. “And you’re right, about all of it. Well, almost all of it.”

“Almost?”

“Harry. It’s short for Harriet,” Doctor Watson said, nodding at the photograph with a wry grin. “She was already a tomboy at seven, still, one mistake’s not bad at all.”

“I always make one,” Sherlock admitted, though he was certain staying for breakfast and witnessing Doctor Watson’s amazement was the biggest one he’d made in some time.

//

A knock at the door interrupted John before he could say anything in response. Even out of the corner of his eye, as he looked at the door, it was impossible to miss the way the consulting detective suddenly went so tense it seemed like he might snap right in half. 

He wasn’t expecting any visitors, and he wasn’t the sort of bloke who had people dropping by unexpected first thing in the morning. He wasn’t stupid enough not to be able to put two and two together. While John had very pointedly _not_ asked him about it, the consulting detective had been stabbed and was obviously quite keen on avoiding who ever had been the original owner of the knife John had removed. He wasn’t going to ignore the very high possibility that there were some really unpleasant people on the other side of his front door looking for the brilliant, but strange, man sat opposite him.

The knock came again, louder and more insistent.

Whoever was on the other side clearly had no intention of going away. The consulting detective’s face had gone white as a sheet and his hands were clenched tightly around the edge of the table.

“I didn’t think they would find me here, not this soon at least,” the consulting detective said, voice barely more than a whisper as his eyes darted around the room. He was looking for an escape.

The decision was easy to make. John had helped him this far. He wasn’t going to abandon the consulting detective to the people who’d stabbed in him the first place, he _couldn’t_.

“Go wait in the bathroom, don’t make any noise,” John ordered. He left no room for question or disobedience in his voice.

The consulting detective’s eyes snapped back to John and he blinked. Then he obeyed, something John imagined to be like gratitude flashing across his features.

John waited until he heard the bathroom door click shut before he collected his gun from where it was taped to the back of his bottom desk drawer. He loaded the clip, took the safety off and tucked it into the back of his jeans beneath his jumper.

He left the chain on and opened the door a few inches. Though he plastered a smile full of polite enquiry and cheer on his face, one glimpse at the two men on his doorstep had his blood running cold.

No wonder the consulting detective had looked like he wanted to bolt out the window at just the thought of them. John had good instincts for people and they’d served him well as doctor and as a Captain. The two men giving him oily smiles through the crack in his door were _dangerous_.

They were both dressed in identical, perfectly tailored and slim-fitting navy blue suits, white shirts with thin, straight ties and shiny black shoes. The first was small, shorter than John and slightly built. He had dark hair and dark eyes and smiled at John like a snake, sharp and cunning. The second was light where his partner was dark, sandy blonde hair and deceptively soft blue eyes. Around six foot tall, he was well built and John wouldn’t have liked his chances in a fight with him _before_ he was shot. The edges of his lips curled, hungry and angry like a wolf and John liked his chances less by the minute. The gun at his back was a cool, but reassuring pressure against his skin.

They both seemed to ooze malignancy. John’s blood thundered through his veins, pushing an adrenaline spike through him hard, like he hadn’t felt since the war.

John wasn’t looking for a fight, but that didn’t mean he was afraid of them.

He smiled disarmingly, heart pounding in chest as anticipation took over. As his body remembered all the ways he’d been trained to deceive, to run into danger not away from it, to protect others.

“Can I help you?”

“Yes, you can,” the taller blonde one said, his voice dark and heavy and as close to a predator’s as a human could possibly get. His lip curled further, revealing sharp canines to add to the effect. John didn’t even flinch.

“You see, we’ve lost our dear brother,” said the shorter, darker one, picking up the sentence. His voice was soft and lilting, with just a hint of Irish and hysteria lurking underneath. John wasn’t fooled for a second, by the tone or his words.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” John offered with a consoling smile. Behind the door he pushed the bottom of his jumper up and let the fingers of his left hand curl around the butt of his Browning.

“We were wondering,” the wolf started. The snake pulled a folded piece of paper out of his jacket’s inner pocket and opening it, finished. “If you’d perhaps seen him?”

John took the poorly photocopied sheet through the gap in the door and made a show of giving it due consideration. There was a picture of the consulting detective in the centre, it was black and white and a little grainy but it was clearly him. His hair was shorter and his face was cleaner in the picture but there was no mistaking those piercing eyes or razor sharp cheekbones.

Above the picture it said:

 **  
_Missing!_   
**

_Please help us find our dear brother Siegerson._

 _He is mentally disturbed and needs to be returned to his family, so we can help him in this difficult time. He suffers from delusions and paranoia._

 _Reward offered._

John handed the sheet back and shook his head mournfully. “I’m really sorry but I can’t say I’ve seen him about.”

“Are you sure?” The snake hissed.

The wolf leaned into the gap in the door, pressing in close. “Are you certain?”

John stood his ground, maintaining his obnoxiously cheerful demeanour as he nodded. “Sorry, I’m sure. Do you have a phone number or something I can ring if I do come across him?”

“No,” the wolf snapped, his demeanour starting to slip.

The snake took over and did nothing to hide the threat in his eyes. “But don’t you worry, we’ll be in the area. Should you stumble across him, we’ll find you again.”

John continued to smile. “Good luck with that,” he said before shutting the door and securing the dead bolt. Not that he thought it would actually do any good if they decided to do something about the consulting detective.

They knew he was inside. John could tell the minute he opened they door that they knew. Now they also knew that he couldn’t be easily cowed and that might just give the consulting detective time to get away.

They were still outside the door.

John stamped his feet, carefully lowering the volume and stepping out of the line of the doorway as if he were retreating back to the kitchen. He could just about hear their heavy, agitated breathing from where he stood, straining to listen through the door.

They must have fallen for it as they waited a moment, then started to speak in lowered, but not inaudible tones.

“He’s lying.”

“Of course he’s lying, I could _smell_ the him in there.”

“He’s hiding. We could take him.”

“ _No_.”

“Why not? You think _he_ could stop us? He’d tear apart so nice and pretty, I’d give you his beating heart.”

“Blood stains on cream cable-knit, _mmmm_ , it is attractive, but no.”

“Why not? He _lied_ to us Moriarty, I don’t like it when people lie to you.”

John was certain the sound he heard next was kissing and was glad he didn’t have to witness it. He imagined it would be something like the animals you see in David Attenborough documentaries that dislocated their jaw to feed.

“You’ll get your chance love, to pull him to pieces, watch him squirm and bleed and beg, when we’ve got the _detective_. If we go in now, he’ll have time to escape. There are three ways out, and we are good but even we can’t be in two other places while standing here. No, we’ll wait.”

Being underestimated wasn’t anything new to John. It had happened all the time in the army, right up until he lifted his gun and pulled the trigger, until he refused to stand down.

He’d learnt to use it to his advantage once and it was all coming back in hot, giddy rushes. His beating heart was being offered on a plate and John Watson hadn’t felt so alive since bullets were rushing past him in the heat and the sand.

//

Sherlock waited for the soft knock on the bathroom door and Doctor Watson’s voice creeping under the gap at the bottom, announcing, “They’re gone.”

He climbed down off the closed toilet seat where he’d been positioned then shut and locked the bathroom window before flicking the catch and opening the door. “What did they say to you?”

Sherlock hadn’t been able to hear anything other than the low hum of voices from where he’d been waiting, at the quickest and easiest escape route accessible to him in case he needed to run. It was not that he didn’t trust Doctor Watson, who despite drugging him had done far more for Sherlock than he deserved as a stranger, and much more than he deserved considering the price he was most likely going to end up paying.

It was that he didn’t trust _anyone_.

Least of all when they were put up against Moriarty and Moran, who were the stuff nightmares were made of. Even Below, where tolerance for the terrible and horrifying was significantly higher than Above, they were the most feared.

In the three years Sherlock had been selling his skills as a consulting detective Below, at least eighty percent of all violent crimes, deaths and beatings were at the hands of Moriary and Moran. Not once had Sherlock encountered a client who, on being told of Moriarty and Moran’s involvement had taken _any_ action against them. Not even the most powerful tribe leaders of Below had lifted a finger to stop them, not even before the murders began and everyone became suspicious and afraid.

“That you’re their brother,” Doctor Watson said, flicking the kettle on in the kitchen and showing no signs he believed them for even a moment. He was smarter than Sherlock had given him credit for.

A small, amused smile curved at the edge of the doctor’s lips.

“What?” Sherlock demanded, unsure how anything could be even mildly entertaining when Moriarty and Moran were involved.

“And your name is Siegerson,” he chuckled, and finished making two fresh cups of tea.

Relief flooded Sherlock. They still did not know his real name, and they were not stupid enough to try and use Toby, the ridiculous salutation Molly had given him. “Anything else?”

Doctor Watson pressed one of the cups into Sherlock’s hands, demanding that Sherlock drink without words. Sherlock obeyed as he spoke. “That you’re mentally disturbed and prone to paranoia and delusions.” Doctor Watson snorted. “Not that I’d call it paranoia with those two after you, I’d call it _sensible_.”

“And what did you tell them?” It was impossible to believe that Doctor Watson had not given anything away, that he could have stood face to face with Moriarty and Moran and said nothing. Yet, they would most likely not be standing around drinking tea in the doctor’s kitchen so calmly if he had let anything at all slip.

Curiosity as well as fear burned hot in Sherlock’s stomach in the long seconds he waited for an answer.

“What do you think?” Doctor Watson asked, sounding mildly affronted. As though not giving in to Moriarty and Moran was something done often, when it was in fact quite the opposite. “That I hadn’t seen you, terribly sorry, and _have you got a number I can call if I bump into him_?”

“They believed you?” He questioned, genuinely curious. Moriarty and Moran would not have knocked on Doctor Watson’s door if they did not believe Sherlock was inside. Yet, he’d seen the man lie. He had been _fooled_ by Doctor Watson’s gentle face and soft voice and he wondered if this was the only man Above or Below who could trick Moriarty and Moran into believing a mistruth.

Doctor Watson made a noise that sounded a lot like _pfffft_. “No, don’t be daft. They just didn’t fancy their chances of taking you by force with more than one escape route.”

Of course. It had been foolish to hope that perhaps the good doctor might have been able to save him. Again.

“I don’t think you’re going to be able to walk out the front door anymore though, sorry,” Doctor Watson pointed out, appearing genuinely bothered by this fact. 

“Of course-,” Sherlock began but the Doctor wasn’t finished surprising Sherlock.

“So I’m thinking out the window there,” he said, cutting in and nodding at the large window beside the sofa. The old wooden frame was sealed shut with a layer of paint. “It’ll be easier on your shoulder than going out the bathroom. You can hop over the garden fence into the access road at the back, then keep on around the house to the main road. Should be able to hide in the crowd of commuters for a bit, this time of the morning.”

Sherlock blinked. “Excuse me?”

“Finish your tea, you’re still looking a bit peaky and it’ll do you good. I’ll get the window open,” Doctor Watson continued, as though they were discussing the weather. As though helping a stranger climb out his flat’s window was just a normal occurrence.

“Probably best you don’t wait much longer,” he continued, seemingly oblivious to Sherlock’s shock. “I’d wager they’re going to watch the front door and the alley the bathroom window opens on to. You don’t want to hang around until they get tired of waiting and come up here again.”

 _That_ brought Sherlock back to reality, from where he had mentally been ticking over the notion that he might just be able to get away. “But what about you? They will come back if they don’t catch me.” With Doctor Watson’s assistance he might be able to escape Moriarty and Moran’s clutches, but he would be leaving the doctor at their mercy.

The only problem with that course of action was, Moriarty and Moran did not _have_ any mercy.

Doctor Watson shrugged, not looking especially troubled by the concept. Perhaps Sherlock had misjudged him entirely and he was little more than an idiot that didn’t comprehend the danger he was in. He didn’t want to believe it, but it would have explained the situation.

“I’ll pop out in a bit. Give you time to get away and then make sure I’m seen leaving on my own, then I’ll go sit in the pub for a bit.”

“They will destroy the flat,” Sherlock pointed out as the doctor retrieved a knife from the kitchen and started breaking the seal that the dried paint formed around the window. 

“They’re just things, and not exactly great ones at that,” Doctor Watson said over his shoulder as though Sherlock was being especially dense.

“They’re still _yours_ ,” he argued. This was all Doctor Watson had and there was no doubt that he would lose it all, at the very least, for helping Sherlock. Even if his interactions with Sherlock hadn’t pulled him through the cracks, then he would still be left with nothing. It was a situation Sherlock was familiar with and not one he would wish on the man who had saved him, who was still trying to save him.

Sherlock couldn’t imagine paying such a price for a person he didn’t know and would never see again.

“Are you trying to talk me out of helping you?” Doctor Watson asked, pushing the window open with a low creak.

 _No_ , Sherlock realised. Doctor Watson wasn’t stupid, not even close. He knew the danger Sherlock was in and the danger he was putting himself in. He was continuing regardless.

“I simply don’t understand _why_ you would go to such lengths for me. A stranger.”

Doctor Watson turned to look at Sherlock and he was struck by such an overwhelming sense of loss in the doctor’s expression. Sherlock didn’t know how he hadn’t noticed it before. “I used to help people every day. You’re the first person I’ve helped in half a year.”

“Thank you,” Sherlock said, sincerely and with the most regret he had felt in ten years.

“It’s nothing,” Doctor Watson assured him, though they both knew it was a lie. 

“I’m aware you’re being modest, but I do hope you understand what you have done for me is not nothing. It could not be further from it. I’m sorry for what is going to happen as a result. I would like to take you with me, but it is impossible and too dangerous.”

Even as he said the words, he realised they were true. He would _like_ to take the doctor with him. Protect him from Moriarty and Moran. Keep him close with his warm jumpers, penchant for making tea and strong, careful hands.

It _was_ impossible.

Sherlock could barely protect himself, let alone Doctor Watson as well.

He climbed out the window, felt his shoulder scream in pain as he clambered down the guttering and dropped to the ground. He could just about make out the outline of the doctor watching him from the window, out the corner of his eye.

He resolutely did not look up to see his face, what he was leaving behind.

Once more, he ran.

//

Fingers, long and impossibly strong, tightened around Sherlock’s neck. As much as he fought, he couldn’t get free. The world started to get hazy and dark around the edges.

He struggled against the urge to let the blackness pull him under, to slip into the relief of unconsciousness. It wouldn’t last. This wasn’t the end.

He could see it in Moriarty and Moran’s eyes, in the frustration on the Golem’s face. There was so much more pain left to come.

He _had_ to get away.

The fingers tightened again.

Everything went black.

//

"Oh, fuck it," John cursed.

He grabbed his donkey jacket from the back of the door and threw it on. Then collected the gun from where he’d put it in his desk drawer, checked the safety was on and tucked it in the back of his jeans.

Three minutes after he'd watched the front door click shut behind the consulting detective, John was running out of the flat after him.

 _"I would like to take you with me, but it is impossible and too dangerous."_

 _Too dangerous_ John's arse. He was a doctor, he'd been to _war_. The consulting detective might be smart but he obviously didn't know how to take care of himself and there were some very bad people after him.

While the consulting detective had been closed lipped about why the men were after him, John couldn't imagine he’d done anything that meant he _deserved_ to be caught by them. He'd seen men like that in Afghanistan, they might have spoken a different language and had different coloured skin but the look in their eyes was the same. The identical maniacal glint of malice. They didn't fight for their country, for honour or morals, for liberty or self-preservation. They did it because they enjoyed it, the smell of blood and screams of pain, and most of all, of being the cause.

There was no stopping, or reasoning, with men like that. The consulting detective was still tired - one night’s rest and some tea and scrambled eggs didn't undo what looked like weeks of running or magically heal a stab wound. He couldn't just sit back and pretend nothing was wrong as the man walked off to his death, not at the sort of hands who would take pleasure in making it hurt. John wouldn't, _couldn't_ , do nothing.

He made his way around the back of the house to the road the consulting detective should have ended up on. As soon as he rounded the corner it was obvious which way the consulting detective had gone. He could hear shouts of distress mingled with the blood-curdling laughter of the snake and the enthusiastic cheers of the wolf.

John ran.

He was down the road and to the source of the commotion in an instant. He took a second to process the sight in front of him.

The man was _huge_. He was at least seven feet, lean but powerful and he had both his dustbin lid-sized hands around the consulting detective’s throat, holding him off the ground. The consulting detective’s feet kicked at his attacker as his face became increasingly red and his hands tugged at those around his neck. To the side, the snake and the wolf were wrapped around each other and watching the events unfolding in front of them with hungry gazes.

For just a second he wanted to know why none of the people walking past were stopping to help or call the police. Why everyone on the street was acting like it was a normal Tuesday morning rather than acknowledging the fact a man was being strangled next to the bus stop.

Then the consulting detective started to turn blue. John stopped thinking and acted.

The shot rang out with an ear-splitting crack and the giant crumpled like a puppet with its strings cut, hitting the ground with a sickening thump. The consulting detective collapsed beside him, rolled onto his side and vomited.

No one screamed.

//

Sherlock looked at the Golem. Wherever the shot came from, it was perfect.

It hit right between the Golem’s eyes and hadn’t even come close to grazing Sherlock, despite their struggling. Blood and brain matter were sprayed out over the pavement and Sherlock could feel the warm, wet of it on his face and the back of his hands were slick and red.

The rush of oxygen back to Sherlock’s brain made his thoughts hazy and his head throb, along with the rest of him. He blamed it for the delay in questioning why the Golem had suddenly, if expertly, been killed. Moriarty and Moran had seemed to be enjoying the show far too much for such an action and they were criminals from Below. They didn’t believe in firearms. Not _personal_ enough.

Sherlock took a deep breath and rolled on to his other side so he didn’t have to look into the Golem’s empty and lifeless eyes, the perfect hole in the centre of his forehead, or his own vomit. He swallowed down the nausea at the sick rush it gave him and mentally traced the trajectory of the bullet, then turned his head to look.

For just a moment, Sherlock wasn’t able to breathe again and his heart pounded inside his chest.

 _Doctor John Watson._  

He stood on the other side of the road still holding what was most likely a Browning handgun, illegally retained from his service in the army and he’d _shot_ the Golem. He had saved Sherlock’s life with a crack shot between the eyes, not just contending with two men struggling, but two lanes of traffic between him and his target.

His earlier underestimation of the good doctor had _nothing_ on this revelation.

Moriarty and Moran ran. Doctor Watson had his sights trained on Moriarty now and they were far enough away from Sherlock that he could easily send them the same way as the Golem before they harmed Sherlock.

Moriarty didn’t resist a parting shot, growling at Sherlock as he vanished. “You can’t hide behind his skirts forever.”

Then Doctor Watson was across the road, dropping to his knees on the pavement beside Sherlock, where he was still nauseous and gasping for breath. Doctor Watson’s hands were at Sherlock’s throat in an instant, his fingers careful but insistent as they moved over Sherlock's throat, where the skin was hot and sore and throbbing.

"Don't try and speak," Doctor Watson instructed in a tone that said very clearly not to argue as Sherlock opened his mouth to make an attempt.

"Just nod, or shake your head," he continued, fingers pressing gently against Sherlock's Adam’s apple. "Are you having any difficulty breathing?"

Sherlock shook his head and the world spun a little more violently than it was before.

"Feeling dizzy?"

Sherlock nodded. Carefully.

"Easy,” Doctor Watson said and Sherlock imagined he’d lost some of the colour that should have been returning. “Is your vision blurry?"

Sherlock shook his head again, the only thing that was currently blurring his vision were tears from the pain of a mistaken attempt at swallowing.

"Good,” Doctor Watson said with a relieved looking smile. “Nearly done, can you wiggle your fingers for me?"

Sherlock waved his hand in response and made his own additional check that his feet were also in working order. As he could feel the cold, hard press of the pavement beneath him and the sharp throbbing pain in his throat, he felt it was safe to assume no permanent damage had been done by the attempted strangulation or sudden drop to the ground.

"Alright, now use your fingers to answer. How long was he strangling you?"

Sherlock held up one finger, then reconsidered and added a second.

"One to two minutes?"

Sherlock nodded and Doctor Watson took a hold of his face in one hand and gently lifted one eyelid, and then the other, to check each eye carefully. Pressed in close Doctor Watson smelt like his flat, like damp and stale air, but underneath was something earthy and _real_.

“Well, let’s get you back inside the flat. I think I’ve scared the creepy bastards off long enough to get you some water and wash the blood off you. Not to mention I’d like to get off the street, seeing as I’m more than a bit concerned that no one’s paying any attention to the fact I just shot someone as they waited for the twenty-nine bus.”

Sherlock opened his mouth to try and say something, but it felt like razor blades were being pulled up his throat and nothing more than a croak came out.

“No, no talking just yet,” Doctor Watson admonished firmly and everything that Sherlock wanted to say, all the questions and statements and protests that wanted to tumble out of his brain through his mouth would have to wait.

Doctor Watson helped Sherlock to sit upright, hand pressed warm and solid against the small of his back as the world lurched violently. He gave Sherlock a moment to swallow down the urge to vomit again, before putting Sherlock’s arm over his shoulder and easing them both to their feet.

The world swayed again as they moved and Sherlock closed his eyes. When he opened them again after two deep breaths everything was as it should be, the Golem was dead at their feet and Doctor Watson was staring into his face in concern.

//

"You alright?" John asked as he pressed a hot cup of tea into the consulting detective’s hands. He was sat on the worn beige sofa in John’s flat and didn’t seem to be aware of the tremor occasionally running through him, so slight it was almost imperceptible.

"I'll be fine," the consulting detective answered. His voice was scratchy and hoarse and he tried, but failed, to hide a wince at the pain swallowing caused him as he sipped carefully at his tea.

John raised an eyebrow in disbelief and sat down on the sofa next to him. The consulting detective’s face was washed free from blood and had returned to its normal, if worryingly pale, colour but his neck was still an angry red and smudges of black and purple were already forming.

John just hoped they weren’t going to turn into handprints. John had tried very hard not to notice it, not while he was looking after the man, but there was no denying the consulting detective was stunning. With his smooth pale skin, sharp blue eyes, messy black curls and tall, lean frame, he was the sort of man John would class as out of his league if he spotted him in the pub, or on the street.

John knew it was ridiculous and base, but he didn’t want to see another man’s palm and fingers marking the consulting detective. Even if he would be gone soon, even if John would never have a chance to be someone other than the bloke who once did the consulting detective a good turn.

"You're lucky he didn't crush your windpipe,” John pointed out, his fingers moving up to touch carefully at bruised throat again. If he were truthful with himself, it was as much just to be able to touch as to reassure himself of the initial check he’d done on the street. “He could have killed you."

"He was never going to kill me," the consulting detective finally said, dismissively, when John returned his hands to his lap and his cup of tea. He was as satisfied as he could be without proper equipment that no serious, or lasting damage had been done by the attempted, and very nearly successful, strangulation.   

"Well, it certainly looked like it." John didn’t even bother trying to hide how much he _didn’t_ believe it. Not with the colour the consulting detective had been turning when John pulled the trigger.

"He was merely incapacitating me,” the consulting detective stated. “Moriarty and Moran have plans to torture me for information before they kill me. You put the fear in them, though. Congratulations, I don't think anyone has done that before."

John drank his tea and didn’t let the news affect him. Even if the giant hadn’t been about to kill the consulting detective, he’d been about to hand him over to a pair of men who would do much worse than suffocation. John had seen that in their eyes the minute he’d seen them on his doorstep. Nothing twitches inside his chest, no guilt stirs. The giant was a bad man, working for animals, brutal and vicious.

John had done the right thing, he didn’t doubt it, but he wanted to know _why_. “Now are you going to tell me about the trouble you’re in?” he said in a tone he’d not used since the army. The one that demanded obedience without using any overt command.

Something that looked an awful lot like it might have been regret passed over the consulting detective’s face. “It is best if I don’t. I am sorry, Doctor Watson.”

“I think, seeing as I’ve saved your life, you could stretch to calling me John.”

“ _John_ ,” the consulting detective echoed and for just a moment, something hopeful flared in the pit of John’s stomach.

He squashed it immediately, reminded himself just how foolish he was being.

“Alright,” he said. If he wasn’t going to get an answer to that question, there was another that was troubling him. As much as he didn’t want to think about it, about the consequences of the actions he’d just taken, he could hardly bury his head in the sand. “How about you tell me why everyone out there didn’t pay a blind bit of notice to you being strangled, or me shooting a seven foot giant of a man?”

A look of _something_ flashed across the consulting detective’s face. John might not have known exactly what it was, but he could tell that it didn’t bode well. Probably for him, rather than the consulting detective.

“It is complicated and we shouldn’t linger. I truly am sorry, John,” the consulting detective said and John believed him on both counts.

The shooting of that bloody giant wouldn’t stop men like that for long, they would regroup, rearm and then try again.

The consulting detective looked pained as he confirmed what John was already thinking, “I have to run. Before they have time to find another associate to act as a shield for them. You should run too. They will not be afraid of you for long and they are nothing if not resourceful.”

The consulting detective had a point, but that didn’t stop the flash of anger burning bright and hard in John’s chest. The first real, solid anger he’d felt in six months and he wasn’t just going to accept the consulting detective walking away without giving him any answers.

“You deduced my entire life this morning, tell me where I have to go,” he demanded.

“Distant relatives, the further from London the better,” the consulting detective said, looking pained again. “They will be more preoccupied with me for the time being, but I cannot guarantee how long that safety will last.”

John could feel his cheeks flushing red with anger and it took a sheer force of will not to shout back at him. “And you just expect me to let you walk out of here, knowing they’ll be out there? Trying to _kill_ you. _Again_.”

John had been willing to do almost anything to help the utterly brilliant, if a bit mad man next to him. He still would. They were both in danger and still the consulting detective wanted to go out there alone, when he _needed_ John to protect him. Just as much as John needed him for the answers there wasn’t time for.

“You already have once today.”

“That was before I killed a man,” John growled in return.

He stood, going to the small wardrobe to pull out his old army pack. His jaw ached with how tightly he was clenching it, biting back all the things he wanted to say to the consulting detective. Things he knew would be of no use.

He knew when a mind was made up.

The bloody idiot was going to get himself killed for some stupid sense of pride, or worse, the notion that it was _John_ who needed protecting.

A tentative hand on John’s arm stilled him as he pushed two jumpers into the bag.

“Are you-,” the consulting detective said, his tone the least confident John had heard since they’d met. “Are you alright?”

“Yes,” he answered automatically. Then thought about it, and corrected, “No, but I will be. He wasn’t a very nice man from the looks of it and even if he wasn’t about to kill you, he was going to hand you over to the pair that would. I don’t regret it.”

He meant it, as well.

He didn’t regret it. He had taken exactly five lives, three in battle, one in mercy and one to save the consulting detective’s life. He didn’t regret _any_ of them. He wouldn’t have done it, if there’d been room for regret.

What he did regret was that he would never see the consulting detective again. That he had walked into John’s life and turned it upside down, reminded him that he did have the power to save lives, to change them, but all his efforts would be for nothing.

That he’d never get the chance to-.

“I’m relieved,” the consulting detective breathed, stepping even further into John’s personal space. His heart pounded. “Thank you, for everything, but I have to go. You shouldn’t stay past the hour, in case they send someone.”

There was a ghost of breath against John’s cheek then the consulting detective was gone.

John sagged against the wardrobe. For just a moment he’d thought-.

But no, it was foolish and stupid. He had to pack and to leave, and not think about the consulting detective again.

Maybe he would prove John wrong and survive.

He hoped so.

//

Sherlock made it as far as the doors to the church where he had crawled, bleeding and exhausted, from Below into Above. Then he stopped. The rain had started again, a persistent drizzle that was already starting to seep through his clothes and into his skin.

He remembered the wet and the cold.

He remembered demanding, _pleading_ , with John not to take him to a hospital. Any sensible, _normal_ person would have ignored Sherlock’s wishes and as a result he would currently be dead.

Sherlock thought about Doctor John Watson and attempted to the put the world back to rights. Only it seemed to shift out from under his feet every time he thought about John and remembered what he’d just done. The man with a shaking hand, psychosomatic limp and a cable-knit Aran jumper had seemed harmless.

John Watson was not even close to ordinary and he was the only reason Sherlock was alive. Not once, but twice over, and to think Sherlock had brushed him off. Had _deduced_ him to be harmless and he’d been wrong.

So incredibly _wrong_.

Sherlock realised that what he had seen under the soft smile and gentle eyes wasn’t weakness, merely a glimpse of something else. Something lost and almost broken in _John_. Only then did Sherlock understand what it meant, just how close to falling through the cracks John had already been when he’d found Sherlock.

 _That_ was why John had seen him, collapsed and bleeding on the pavement in the pouring rain. John was just as lost as Sherlock had been five years ago and Sherlock had mistaken it for something else.

He had seen John as little more than a Good Samaritan when there was _so much more_. John Watson was loyal and brave, selfless, and a crack shot with a moral code of steel. Sherlock suspected that John was the most dangerous man he would ever meet and that included whoever was behind the murders Below. It was John, and only John, because you wouldn’t, _couldn’t_ believe he was capable of murder.

And in the correct circumstances he was. Without remorse or regret.

He realised with a jolt, a sharp clenching in his stomach, that he had no idea _why_ he had left John. Other than the possibility that he had been unbearably, unforgivably _slow_.

There was no doubt that John had slipped through the cracks in the world, an obvious fact Sherlock had been choosing to ignore. It was impossible that he could have shot a man in the middle of a crowded street and had it go unnoticed unless he was no longer part of Above. Sherlock had dragged him down and left him alone for what?

A misguided notion of gallantry?

John Watson was the last person that needed protecting.

What he did need was a guide for Below, someone to do a better job that the simpering Rat-Speaker Molly had done for him. Someone to help him find his place in the world Below, where Sherlock, who had never fitted in anywhere Above had found a place that did not reject him. A place that stimulated him.

John Watson needed someone to show him Below, and if it allowed Sherlock to keep him close, all the better.

 

//

John blinked in surprise.

The consulting detective stood in his open doorway, one hand held up in either supplication or greeting, or both.

“It’s only me,” he said. There was an edge to his voice that betrayed the cool and calm impression it looked like he was trying to pull off.

John flicked the safety back on the gun and lowered it, tucking it away again in the waistband at the back of his jeans. It wasn’t the ideal spot, but easy access was what counted the most. When he’d heard the noise at the front door he’d been ready to shoot as soon as it had opened, lock picked.

The consulting detective was just bloody lucky that John didn’t shoot first, think second, ask important questions like _who’s that?_ third.

“I thought you were leaving,” John said. After his grand act of buggering off and leaving John to it, the consulting detective could go jump if he thought he was getting a hello.

John watched as the consulting detective closed the front door behind him. He didn’t put the chain or dead-bolt across, just as John hadn’t. They both knew it wouldn’t do much against the men after them. John’s gun and the five rounds left in it were the best protection he had.

“Yes, I was,” the consulting detective said.

“Without me,” John prompted, because he was more than a bit confused and the intensely thoughtful look on the consulting detective’s face wasn’t helping much.

After the whole _repeated_ assertions from the consulting detective that John couldn’t possibly help him, it didn’t make any sense that he’d be back. Even if John had _wanted_ him to come back. To finish what he had almost started.

It wasn’t as if he might have left something, John had found him with nothing more than the clothes on his back and they were leaving in slightly better, certainly cleaner, condition.

“You shot a man,” the consulting detective answered and John bristled again.

“Yes,” he said through gritted teeth. He might not _regret_ shooting the man who’d been trying very hard to strangle the consulting detective, but that didn’t mean he wanted to dwell on it. The less he thought about the whole thing, the better.

“It wasn’t an easy shot.” It wasn’t said in any way John was used to. Superiors in the army would say it with a sort of pride and his regiment would laugh and tease and be amazed _Doc Watson_ could do that _and_ stitch a man back together.

To the consulting detective it sounded like a fact and nothing more. It wasn’t an easy shot, plain and simple.

It hadn’t been the hardest John had ever made, but the consulting detective wasn’t ever to know that. “And?”

“It was a _crack_ shot.” Again, said like a fact and nothing more.

John was beginning to miss certain social cues the consulting detective was lacking. Like the ability to get on and say what he wanted before buggering off _again_ and leaving John to run for his life in an unpleasant amount of confusion.

“Thought you were in a bit of a hurry?”

The consulting detective didn’t even have the good grace to look abashed, he just ploughed right on. “Not an easy task for a man with a tremor in his dominant hand.”

“Then you’re lucky I didn’t hit you,” John said shortly. Seeing as he was harbouring some unpleasant thoughts to that tune, he turned back to rearranging the items he’d shoved into his bag to make room for his medical kit.

“There was no luck involved,” the consulting detective said and John stiffened, his whole body instantly tense. The man was suddenly right up in John’s personal space, so close he could feel the damp heat of his breath on the back of his neck. “The limp might be in your head, but the tremor isn’t.”

“Excuse me?” John said spinning around, the words out of his mouth even as the horrible, painful realisation that they’d all been _right_ hit him.

“Your cane, it’s been in the corner of the room since Moriarty and Moran arrived. You’re perfectly fine without it,” the consulting detective said at the same time as John processed the same knowledge.

He didn’t need to look over to the corner of the room to know his cane was there. He _remembered_ putting it there before he opened the door and then it had been forgotten in the rush of helping the consulting detective escape and the sharp push of adrenaline. 

“And my hand?” He had to ask, how did the consulting detective know that the tremor in his hand was real when John had felt the pain in his leg as clearly as the pain in his shoulder for the last six months.

“It didn’t shake,” the consulting detective said, breath warm against John’s cheek as he reached down to take John’s hand. He lifted it and stepped back, putting a couple of inches of space between them and circled John’s wrist with long, elegant fingers. “I misjudged you. I thought the war had damaged you. I was wrong.”

John looked up at the consulting detective, tearing his eyes away from the sight of his hand. Steady. “How do you figure that one?”

“The war wasn’t what damaged you, it was _leaving_ that did,” he breathed against John’s ear, an intimate whisper for such a world-shattering secret.

A secret that had been his own personal truth, and hell, since he returned. One he’d told no one. One nobody had even thought to guess.

John swallowed. “Your point?”

“Come with me,” the consulting detective said, still pressed against John, damp, lean, solid and oh so tempting.

It was what John had wanted, after all.

 _But._

“What happened to _impossible_?”

The consulting detective stepped back and smirked down at John, pressing the last pair of John’s jeans into the top of his bag and shutting it without looking. “That was before I changed my mind.”

“Oh, really?” John laughed, dryly, and pulled the bag away from the consulting detective’s hands. His assumption that John would just come running because he told him to going much further to pissing him off than the change of tune. “I’m supposed to just come running now you’ve changed your mind?”

“Yes,” the consulting detective replied with so much confidence it came off him in waves. It was just like when he’d told John his entire life story from the few things scattered around his dull and empty room. The sort of confidence that made John’s heart beat just a bit faster and his interest perk up rather a lot.

“Because you miss it. You hide it well, but you miss the danger. I can leave you here and once you’re out of London you’ll be safe. Or, you can come with me. It _will_ be dangerous. Are you interested?”

“Oh god yes,” John breathed.

He couldn’t deny it. Why had he even tried?

There wasn’t any point.

The consulting detective was right, the sexy, know-it-all, _bastard_ , was right. He _wanted_ to go with him.

He _was_ going with him.

“You’d best gather anything else you require,” the consulting detective said with a smile that wouldn’t look out of place on a cat that just got the canary. “We have a market to attend, I need information.”

//

John led Sherlock through the still crowded streets of Battersea, towards the banks of the river and Chelsea Bridge. Sherlock had asked John which way was the quickest as soon as they had stepped out into the open. There was a time when he had the whole of London mapped inside his head, better than any taxi driver, with every shortcut, side street and alleyway. Then he had been Below and all that mattered of Above anymore was where it intersected with the whole new endless world he now inhabited.

Sherlock had considered the safety of returning Below through the Church and down into the catacombs below but had decided against it while John finished gathering a small, but essential set of his belongings in his flat. There was no doubt that he was still army through and through, as Sherlock watched the quick but efficient way he had folded and stowed away only the most practical of items. Sherlock had turned a blind eye to the careful packing of several photographs of his regiment and the family photograph from Skegness. After all, John had shown Sherlock quite soundly that sentimentality did not always equal weakness.

They travelled in silence.

Sherlock was conflicted. Both glad and resentful of the silence as nothing but the sounds of London Above going about its business rattled between them.

When Sherlock had first slipped through, and the drugs and withdrawal were finally past, he had quickly come to resent Molly for her incessant mindless questions and needless chatter. While Molly had no doubt saved his life, once his mind was functioning adequately he found he had no care for any information that didn’t have practical use. At first he thought she simply did not understand him in any way. When he was bright and sharp again he saw her actions for what they were. Careful, skilled manipulation he had not thought her bright enough to orchestrate, all to the end of keeping him with her.  

John, on the other hand, had questions. _Real_ questions. Sherlock could see it in the creases at the corner of his eyes and the line of his shoulders, but he didn’t ask them. He simply kept a fast, but not impossible pace through Battersea and then the park, until Sherlock was able to orientate himself and start to lead.

What John understood was the necessity of putting as much distance between themselves and their last known location to Moriarty and Moran as possible. It was not the time for questions, or for slowing down, and Sherlock reminded himself that he’d do well to remember it.

His heart might quicken, almost imperceptibly, whenever John’s shoulder brushed his own. It was not a reason to risk everything.

Sherlock was taking John to the market, where they would be safe for long enough for all questions to be answered.

//

“Is that a door?” John asked.

It _looked_ like a door. Made of solid oak and iron it was the sort of old looking that John associated with museums and labels that said _made in the fourteenth century_ and didn’t look a bit water damaged. It did _not_ belong in the bank of the Thames, about a hundred meters or so from the base of Chelsea Bridge.

John sunk a little further into the silt and shifted his feet, before it swallowed him any further. The consulting detective looked unperturbed by the whole thing, and barely seemed to leave any footprints.

“Yes,” the consulting detective said, his tone expressing just how much he disliked obvious questions. “It is a door.”

John gave him an unimpressed glare. Doors in the bank of the Thames were hardly general knowledge. Still, it rolled off the consulting detective like water off a duck’s back.

John watched as the consulting detective opened it. “And we’re going through it.”

He stared into the dark tunnel for a moment, then looked at the consulting detective’s expectant face. He was waiting for John to go first.

This was probably the point of no return and John should probably have been having some sort of emotional or moral crisis. He looked back into the dark, damp, tunnel and knew he was long past it.

In fact, he had been past it since he rolled the consulting detective over in the pouring rain. Since he had found someone, _something_ , other than the emptiness that had slowly been consuming him since he left the army.

John’s heart pounded behind his ribs at the thrill of the unknown. He stepped inside.

 

//

"You have questions," Sherlock said once the access door to the tunnels under the banks of the Thames was closed and the small oil lamp from the entranceway was lit and in his hand. The steady stream of water rushing along the stone floor would wash away any trace of their presence, so long as they were careful.

One glance at John confirmed that Sherlock didn’t need to be explicit about the requirement for caution in the extreme. Sherlock suspected John's last posting was a desert country from his obvious dislike of the rain and the damp, not to mention the ease with which he'd handled himself outside on the sandy bank.

John waited until they had both passed through the junction that connected their tunnel to another, forming a cavernous crossroads. It minimised the chance of a dangerous and revealing echo when he finally answered, "Don't be daft. Of _course_ I have questions."

Sherlock paused as they reached another junction and listened hard.

All he could hear was the drip twelve feet ahead of them, the two rats behind them and the soft, almost imperceptible sound of John’s steady breaths. The rats said nothing.

No Moriarty and Moran following then, not yet at least.

"What is it you want to know?” Sherlock asked, leading John deeper into the depths of London and the maze of tunnels he knew infinitely better than the roads Above. “I'll tell you what I can until we reach our destination."

John was silent, his face thoughtful as he walked beside Sherlock, each step careful and measured to make as little noise in the running water as possible.

"Where do I start?” He finally said, exasperated. “Who are you, really? What are we doing in _mythical_ tunnels under London? Why are people trying to kill you? What market are we going to? What the bloody hell is going on and why on _earth_ are you dressed like something out of Jane Austen?"

It was a sudden barrage of questions. All uttered in measured, quiet, but ever-increasingly frustrated tones. Though the last was declared with an exasperated sort of frustration, Sherlock still bristled.

As far as fashion went Below, Sherlock was rather dashing. Even if being on the run had left him a little rougher around the edges than he'd prefer. His appearance was the one thing he allowed himself to be vain about (other than his intellect), as he hadn’t been during his drug use. Edge Wear was an excellent tailor, and indebted to Sherlock for exposing the Maids of the Veil’s theft while in her employ.

John was the one who would stand out at the Floating Market as new, as not belonging.

“I’ll have you know that this is hardly out of place,” Sherlock said, nodding down to his attire. “Where I come from.”

“And where _is_ that exactly?” John asked, with an amused mix of confusion and disbelief. “I know you sound a bit posh, but I didn’t know there were bits of England left stuck that far in the past.”

“I’m from London,” Sherlock answered, truthfully. “I was born in Charing Cross Hospital and I was raised in Kensington, but that isn’t relevant. Most things up there have been irrelevant for some time.”

John stopped and looked briefly at the ceiling of the tunnel before turning his attention back to Sherlock, head cocked just slightly to one side. “Up there?”

“Yes, Above,” Sherlock answered with another nod, this time upwards. “We are, very obviously, Below. Though in more sense than one.”

John’s face contorted into something new, and unmistakably angry. “How about you stop talking in riddles and just tell me,” he snapped. He crossed his arms over his chest and stopped their advancement.

Sherlock stared at him.

John sighed, and dropped his arms to his side. “Whatever it is, it can’t be madder than what’s already happened this morning, alright? I just-. I _need_ to know and I think I’ve been really bloody patient until now.”

Sherlock could not argue with the vast majority of John’s sentiment. He simply found that in the face of having to tell John the truth, he was suddenly horribly afraid that he would think Sherlock was entirely barking mad and then would turn around and go. Leave Sherlock alone and most likely be found and killed by Moriarty and Moran, two things Sherlock could not want less than anything in the world.

Only, there wasn’t much choice left.

“I’m not sure you’ll agree with that statement once I am done, but here it is. There are two Londons, or perhaps better put, there is one city and she has two faces. There is Above, where I was born and you have just come from, and there is the Underside, which is Below.”

John considered this information for a moment. “And so we’re in the Underside?”

“Simply, yes,” Sherlock agreed. Then dug his own grave by adding, “Though it is far more complex than that.”

“I imagine that’s why I’ve never heard about another city underneath London before, right?” John asked, with a dry chuckle and began to move forward, but with slower steps.

Sherlock smirked and walked with him, glad to be on the move again, putting more distance between themselves and their hunters.

“Quite. Below is for the lost, the forgotten and the broken. There are the native peoples, who operate outside of most the conventional laws of science and sometimes even nature and then are the people like us.” Sherlock ensures he betrays no emotion when he says it. He is as good as confessing to John that no one Above cared about him enough to stop it from happening, and it will not take John long to realise that the same is true of himself.

He has always known himself to be difficult, unlovable. He doesn’t think that John will accept the notion of being forgotten as easily.

“The world Above forgets about us and we fall through the cracks. Once you are part of Below, there is no going back, you cease to exist Above. As you become part of Below, you learn to see all the things in the dark places of the city you could never have seen before.”

“And you fell through?” John questioned softly, stopping Sherlock with a gentle hand on his forearm.

“Yes,” Sherlock answered, taken unawares. He attempted to process the turn in the conversation, that John was… _concerned_ for Sherlock?

“Can I ask you how?” John continued, releasing Sherlock before adding, “You don’t have to answer, obviously.”

“Obviously I don’t,” Sherlock snapped, an automatic defence he quickly thinks better of when he sees injury flash in John’s eyes. “Though I will,” he offered, more softly. As I’m sure you suspected, it was drugs. Cocaine and then heroin, of which I am both clean of.”

“I know,” John assured, gently. “I can see. How long?”

Of course he would be able to see, he was a doctor after all. Sherlock looked away from John, attempted to pull his thoughts together and remain the cold, intellectual creature he had always been.

The one that seemed to enthral John.

“Five years, the same amount of time since I fell through the cracks.”

“That’s good,” John said with a smile. Sherlock lost brief control of himself and it did not slip past John unnoticed. “No, don’t look at me like that, it _is_ good. Coming off heroin is hard enough with the right help and support, let alone down here and on your own. I’m surprised it didn’t kill you.”

“I was rather determined that I was not going to die,” Sherlock explained. Sometimes he suspected it was the determination alone that kept him going through the most difficult parts. “However, I wasn’t alone. I was taken in by one of the natives, a rat-speaker named Molly and she…assisted me, though more for her own benefit than mine. She was hoping to earn my gratitude.”

“And you weren’t grateful?” John asked, though Sherlock was unsure if he sounded disapproving or disbelieving.

“I was,” Sherlock said. He did not want John’s disapproval, not when for once it was not deserved. “I would mostly certainly have died in the first week if not for her care. However, once I returned to myself, it became obvious what she had in mind for repayment was not something I was willing, or able to give.”

“Oh, wow.” John’s eyes widened. “That’s a bit awkward.”

“Very much so,” Sherlock agreed. Molly had been _persistent_ and he had not wanted to hurt her feelings, not initially at least. Not until it had become the most effective way to put an end to her extremely misplaced affections.

John was silent for several more metres. Sherlock noted the marks on the walls and mapped their location and their route until John finally said, “And what about me?”

“You saved my life, twice, I believe the balance of debt is still in your favour,” Sherlock answered. He did not say that he would in fact welcome all or any affections that John might have for him, though it was certainly a sentiment he felt.

“No.” John shook his head and stopped Sherlock again, turning to look him in the eyes through the dim light Sherlock’s light was providing. “That’s not what I meant. I want to be clear on this. There’s London Above and London Below.”

“Yes,” Sherlock agreed.

“And you can’t be part of both of them.”

“Correct,” Sherlock agreed again, watching John carefully.

Sherlock could tell John was processing all the information he had, collating it with the fact that he was with Sherlock in tunnels that did not exist in Above and that not a single person flinched when he killed a man on a busy street.

It was written all over his face the moment he came to the conclusion that his life had changed forever. That Sherlock coming into his life had changed it forever.

“And I’m part of Below now,” John said with the gravity it deserved.

“Yes,” Sherlock confirmed and hoped that John would not blame him, would not turn around and walk away. Not when Sherlock was beginning to appreciate the true, and extremely high value of what he had found. Not when there was so much _more_ for men like Sherlock, and John, Below.

“Right. Okay. Um. Right,” John muttered, stopping again. 

Sherlock hesitated for moment, before stepping forward. Mirroring John’s own earlier actions, he placed a careful hand on his arm as he asked, “Are you alright?”

“Yes, yes, of course,” John assured him, though he did not seem to believe it himself. Sherlock didn’t either. It would take time for John to see Below the way Sherlock did.

“Right. Erm, no, actually. No. I’m not,” John said, shaking his head and stepping back and away from Sherlock. “Can you give me a minute?”

Sherlock nodded and stepped back.

John bent over, rested his hands on his knees carefully so he would not over-balance with the full army rucksack on his shoulders. Sherlock watched as he took several long, deep breaths and his whole body trembled ever so slightly.

Sherlock wanted to go to him, to offer well-meant assurances and platitudes that everything would be fine, all of which John would not yet believe. Sherlock didn’t. Instead, he did as John asked and gave him what Molly had denied him.

The space he needed without letting him out of his peripheral vision.

//

The consulting detective waited as John tried to control his breathing and fought the violent urge to empty the contents of his stomach onto the floor.

He wanted to rail against the consulting detective, call him _fucking mental_ and go back to daylight and his flat and the real world. Only, there was no real world. Not for him. Not anymore.

It should have been impossible to believe. John had never had any faith in superstition or magic, or even religion. He believed in what he could touch and see and _feel_.

John had known something wasn’t right the moment he’d shot the giant. When there had been no flinches or screams or sirens as a man lay dead in the street and John tended to the consulting detective with the murder weapon beside him.

He had simply allowed himself to be dragged along by the air of confidence the consulting detective was surrounded in, heady and addictive. He had followed the promise of danger and the deep, heavy pull of adrenaline and _purpose_ in his stomach.

Only-. _Wait a bloody second!_

“And you were just going to leave me?” He demanded, head snapping up to glare in accusation at the consulting detective. “Knowing that no one can see me anymore, that I’m part of some _mad_ underground world now and I wouldn’t have a bloody clue?”

“Yes,” the consulting detective said carefully, as though John were something dangerous himself, about to explode. 

He was right to.

John was bloody _furious_. “You’re a right bastard, you know,” he said, scrubbing his hand over his face. He thought about turning around. Leaving the consulting detective to fend for himself as he’d left John.

He barely entertained the notion for more than a second.

Even if he didn’t need the consulting detective as much as he needed John – even if he didn’t know it yet – he just _couldn’t_. Just like he couldn’t leave Donovan bleeding out in the middle of an Afghan road, bullets flying around them from the insurgent’s ambush. 

“It’s been said,” the consulting detective agreed and John had no trouble believing it.

He took a deep breath. Asked the important question. “Then why did you bother coming back?”

“You know why,” the consulting detective said. His tone sounded frustrated, though John was certain he could see a hint of a blush creeping up his cheeks in the dim light. “I realised I was wrong about you. You aren’t going to slow me down.”

“And what if you hadn’t realised? What would have happened to me? Or didn’t you think about that? Or is it that you just didn’t care?” John demanded, not satisfied.

He needed to know if there was more to it than what the consulting detective had said in his flat, what he was saying now. Or if it was little more than a cheap line and empty platitudes.

Even if there was nothing he could say that would make John leave him, he needed to know if there was a reason for him to stay with the consulting detective once this was all over.

John _wanted_ there to be a reason to stay. Even though he was angry he couldn’t deny the way the consulting detective made him feel alive. The way his whole body had hummed when he’d pressed close in John’s flat, just how bloody brilliant he was. John didn’t want to let that go, not if there was something more. The _chance_ of something more.

“You’re angry,” the consulting detective said, a little too calmly for John’s liking. He wondered just how seriously he was taking this. “Of course you are, and I am sorry you have been brought into this. I wanted to spare you, but, I think that perhaps you were already on the edge.”

It effectively stopped John in his tracks. “On the edge of what?” he questioned cautiously although he had a horrible feeling he already knew what the consulting detective was going to say. And he wasn’t going to like it.

The consulting detective moved closer to John, but didn’t reach out to touch him again. “Falling through. You saw me when by all rights you should have just passed me by.”

“You were collapsed in the middle of the pavement, of course I was going to bloody see you.”

“I don’t pass in your world anymore, John. None of the other people who passed me as I lost consciousness noticed, neither did those who stood near as I stumbled through the rain with a knife in my shoulder. I’m only seen when I demand a person’s attention and yet you, you noticed me and you didn’t forget me.”

There was something almost soft in the consulting detective’s voice as he stepped into John’s personal space, kept just enough distance between them so they didn’t touch. John’s heart skipped a beat, then pounded even harder behind his ribs.

“I was foolish to try and deny what had happened to you out of hope that it had not, that you were safe from this. I was even more foolish to believe that I would be better off without you. Naturally, I will understand if you want to part company and I will not try to stop you. However, I hope that you do not. I came back for a reason.”

//

There was nothing more for Sherlock to say. Nothing he was willing to, or thought John would welcome hearing, at least.

He turned, and continued his journey through the winding, senseless tunnels that made up just a small, little known part of London Below and hoped.

He had progressed perhaps thirty feet when he heard John’s footsteps. He breathed a sigh of relief. John was following. He was coming with Sherlock, even if the treads of his feet seemed to indicate that he was wary, unsure that he was making the correct choice.

//

John lost track of how long they walked through the tunnels under London. They met no one and John presumed it was directly related to his occasional sense of going around in circles. The consulting detective was making sure they weren't seen, or heard by anyone else from Below.

Every so often he'd catch the consulting detective looking at him. Just a curious, fleeting glance out the corner of his eye. John had thought he'd been imagining it, until the third time he'd caught him at it.

John was tempted to tell the consulting detective he wasn't exactly mad anymore. Just a bit disappointed. Only he probably deserved to stew a little more, even after his speech. The effects of which John was working very hard on pretending he didn’t feel.

//

They did not take the most direct route to the Floating Market.

Sherlock suspected the reason Moriarty and Moran were not following them was because they had guessed Sherlock’s intended destination. They would not violate the market truce. Not even Moriarty and Moran would take such a risk as to try and attack at the market. Not even they would escape the retribution of the people of Below.

No.

They would lay in wait and make their move outside the market. Either on his and John's approach or exit.

It called for even more caution on their journey to the market's newest location. The extra time was worth it, to ensure that they did not have to show themselves until they were within the market’s bounds, and it’s protection.

//

They daylight burned John's eyes as they climbed out of the sewer access.  He raised his arm to block out the sun, high and bright in the London sky as the consulting detective closed the manhole back up with the spine-jarring scrape of metal on metal. The air was fresh and clean and cold after being trapped in the damp, stuffy tunnels of Below.

"Where are we?" John asked, squinting at the consulting detective, while his eyes tried to adapt to the sudden increase in light.

"The market," he replied and John could just make out a smirk as he nodded up at the building looming over them.

John looked up and blinked. He instantly recognised the red brick, the smoked glass and the tall, distinctive white smokestacks.

"The Tate Modern?" He said and frowned. “Since when do they have markets in the modern art museum?”

“They don’t,” the consulting detective said, pointing to the large sign that had been erected by the entrance.

 _Tate Modern, closed for refurbishment October 1 st – 9th, we apologise for any inconvenience caused._

“Remember what we agreed about being less cryptic,” John said, catching the consulting detective by the arm again. He wasn’t just going to let the consulting detective walk into a building until he was sure it was safe.

“It is called the Floating Market, not like it’s namesake in Asia because it takes place on water, but because it’s time and location are ever-changing. In all other regards, it is like any other market. People come to buy and to sell, only this is a market for the people of Below. It is usually held at night, but it has been deemed too dangerous in the current climate, which is fortuitous for us.”

“So why are we here?” John asked, holding his ground as the consulting detective attempted to lead him towards the museum. “It can’t be safe, going into a crowded market when there are two bloody _lunatics_ out there very keen on seeing us dead.”

The consulting detective stopped and looked John straight in the eye. He was unflinching and intimidating. John’s pulse quickened with excitement.

“There is nowhere safer, Above or Below, than inside the boundaries of the Floating Market. I promised you answers, come inside and I will tell you. Everything.”

//

John’s eyes went so wide it seemed almost anatomically impossible. Sherlock imagined he had looked somewhat similar the first time Molly had brought him to the Floating Market.

It had been on the Golden Hind. Sherlock was still not entirely lucid after the withdrawal and had hit his head four times on the ship’s beams before Molly had taken pity on him and guided him back to the hole where they had been living.

John would always remember his first Floating Market and even Sherlock would admit that Below had for once, outdone itself.

The market was set up inside the main entrance to the Tate, and what had been the turbine hall. The current installation was a sunrise and the whole room was lit with hues of yellow and orange and red. It appeared as though the walls and the floor were on fire and it had been such a very long time since Sherlock had seen the run rise or set, he could not even tell if it was accurate or romanticised.

Either way, it made the market more visually appealing to eyes less curious than Sherlock’s, who never failed to entertain himself with all the peoples of Below. With being able to look and deduce and work without retribution, with only stares of idle interest and requests for trades, for consultations, in return.

“I’ve not seen anything like this since Afghanistan,” John finally said, as Sherlock steered him around the edge of the crowd. There was excitement, and awe in his voice, and Sherlock knew he would do anything to hear John sound like that again.

//

It was as though the world had come to life.

Everything was bright and warm and for a long moment John’s senses were completely overwhelmed. Trapped in the tunnels under London the world John had been sucked into had felt so empty and dark and cold when the consulting detective wasn’t pressed against him, distracting all his senses. Now it was _alive_.

The Tate Modern was bursting with people, movements, sounds and smells. Even as the consulting detective led John around the edge of the crowd there was almost too much to take in.

There were stalls everywhere. Nearly the entire turbine hall was filled with them, tables, tents, shacks and even stacks of boxes crammed into the cavernous space. John could see people selling clothes and jewellery, what looked like used plastic shopping bags, bits of old tv’s and radios, hand-made - and just a little botched - lanterns, old shoes and more.

People like John had never seen before were crowded around them, shouting, waving, browsing, haggling and bargaining with the sellers. Just like Above they were all shapes and sizes and colours, but that was where the similarities ended. There were some dressed like the consulting detective. Others were so dirty the brown of the mud and filth seemed ground-in and they were dressed in old sacks, newspapers and bin-bags fashioned into clothes. There were woman in rich velvets with white skin and violet eyes that John instantly distrusted and others in old, ragged furs.

An extremely large man passed them by wearing nothing but a nappy. John blinked twice then tried very hard to forget about the sight.

Through the rush of people and the almost deafening cacophony he could smell the coal and the wood fires, the meat grilling over the top of them and the deep, rich heady smells of stews and curries. John’s stomach made itself known.

The consulting detective pressed his hand to the small of John’s back, between his jacket and army bag, leading John away from the smell of food he was trying to follow.

“The market operates under a truce which has been in place since the market’s very beginning. There is no violence on market grounds, while it is in session. There are no exceptions and the punishment for breaking the truce is death. Moriarty and Moran may be here looking for us, and though they will not be able to harm us in any way, it is in our best interest to avoid them and ensure they do not see us leaving.”

“Yeah, that’s a bit obvious,” John said, with a snort. “Look, while this whole market business is all very interesting, we’re safe, my stomach is rumbling and I’d really like those bloody answers you keep promising me. Food, and then we talk.”

The consulting detective looked at John for a moment, then a smile flashed across his features. “Of course.”

John suspected he’d just won some sort of respect. Or something close to it.

He smiled back.

//

Sherlock procured two steaming portions of vegetable stew, each served in it’s own chunk of hollowed out bread, with another piece for a spoon. They had found a quiet, secluded spot where they were as well hidden as they could be from the crowd, but could still observe, keep watch for Moriarty and Moran.

John dove straight in with his makeshift cutlery as soon as he had sat down on top of his rucksack. He succeeded in burning his tongue on the hot stew and then he sat back and waited for it to cool as Sherlock was doing.

He studied John, the way his eyes passed over what they could see of the market, taking it all in with the occasional excited hitch in his breath. Sherlock allowed himself a moment to watch, trusted that John would see Moriarty and Moran if they were out there, attempting the same.

“I know that so far you have not had a particularly favourable view of Below,” Sherlock said softly. He caught John’s gaze shifting to him for a moment, before continuing to watch as the market went about its business. “But I do not want you to think that it is all tunnels and darkness. There _is_ life for those from Below, both above and under the ground.”

John turned to Sherlock and the corner of his lip curled as he said, “Even though the name ‘Below’ strongly implies that it’s, y’know, _under_?”

A thrill ran through Sherlock.

John was taking this a great deal better than he had, before he fully understood the freedom Below would grant him.

“Below is _our_ world,” Sherlock explained, as John began to eat, more cautiously this time. “Above is theirs. We can move in it, have daylight and fresh air when we please, but we cannot interact with them. Below, all the people are our own and _this_ ,” he said nodding at the market, “is just the _beginning_ of all there is to explore.”

Something that Sherlock strongly suspected was excitement lit up John’s face before he pulled it back in, turned his attention to his meal.

 _Yes_ , John would find his place Below, and just as Sherlock had, he would find it preferable to Above.

“Are you happier here?” John asked, after several mouthfuls of stew had been put away and Sherlock had begun on his own. “In general, I mean, I’d be a bit worried if you were happy while running for your life.”

Sherlock considered the question carefully, and answered truthfully. “I am not unhappy.”

“And that’s better?” John questioned, brow furrowed slightly and Sherlock acknowledge his answer had perhaps not been the most encouraging without further details. “Than when you were Above, before the, y’know?”

“Infinitely,” he said honestly, amused at John’s dancing around the matter of his drug abuse. “From the age of twelve I wanted to work with the police. I solved a murder from a newspaper report and from that moment I was set. Of course, no one would take a twelve year-old boy from London seriously in a possible murder investigation in Wales. It was when the murder was incorrectly ruled as an accidental drowning that I decided I was going work _with_ the police, not _for_ them.”

John laughed softly and something inside Sherlock’s chest buzzed at the sound of it. “As a consulting detective?”

“Yes,” he smirked in return at John’s quick understanding. “I invented my own career at twelve. By the time I was twenty-four one of the officers in the Met was beginning to take me seriously, but I was denied access to crime scenes, to suspects, to evidence. To anything other than reports. Rules, regulations, they said. Yet none of them could _see_ , not like I could. I became frustrated, listless, and it was soon impossible for me to engage with anything satisfactorily.”

It was not a startling leap of logic to make and John made it easily. “And then you started the drugs?”

Sherlock nodded, feeling a flush of shame though John said the words without a trace of judgement. He does not mention Victor, his part in it all. Does not want John to know how easily led Sherlock had been, before he had learnt his lesson.

“Cocaine was a rush, of course. By the time I was twenty five I was using frequently and entirely certain I was unstoppable while under the influence, that my mind was truly superb.”

“And it wasn’t.” John said it for the simple fact it was. One Sherlock had taken a long time to learn, and one John had surely witnessed first hand more than once during his career as a doctor. 

“No, it wasn’t. I was reacting to the slightest stimulus. I forced my way on to a crime scene and after was told it was only by sheer chance that I did not damage any evidence vital to the case. The freshly promoted Detective Inspector who had begun to put his trust in me gave me a choice, working with the Met or the drugs.”

“You chose the drugs.” It was not a question. John already knew the length and breadth of Sherlock’s addiction and as much as he did not want to shame himself further, he had promised John answers. 

“Not my most intellectually brilliant choice, in retrospect,” he admitted, though he knew he would not take the choice back if it meant losing Below. He could not give it up, the first place in the entire world that Sherlock _fit_. “However, I did try. I was mostly clean for three months.”

“What happened?” John asked, because of course he knew it had not worked. That Sherlock had eventually moved from cocaine to heroin when the buzz was no longer enough, when the world had needed to become duller rather than brighter.

“I was not taken seriously, by anyone except the Detective Inspector, Lestrade was his name.” Occasionally Sherlock wonders what happened to Lestrade, the only member of the Met Sherlock had deemed halfway bright enough for him to approach.

He swallowed as he reached the crux of the matter, where it had all gone wrong. What defined his life Above from his life Below.

John waited patiently.

“What I do has never… It has never garnered me any favour. I had thought it would be different, that if nothing else my skills would be respected. They were not. Cocaine allowed me to switch off the background noise, the questions, accusations, abuse, the _disbelief_. Not just from the Met, but from everywhere.”

John was silent, his face thoughtful as he ate for several more minutes before turning back to Sherlock. “And you don’t get that here, do you?”

For one endless moment Sherlock was entirely consumed by everything about John and the way he continued to surprise him. The simple fact that he _understood_ , was a feat few had achieved in Sherlock’s experiences with personal interactions.

He did not need to tell John that Below, where _nothing_ was normal, Sherlock had a place in the world. Something he had never had Above.

Sherlock shook his head and John offered him a warm smile in return.

They finished eating in silence and Sherlock could not stop his eyes from occasionally straying to John. Amazing, _wonderful_ , John. His features lit up by the fake sunrise, painted a warm orange with bright, hot streaks of red across his cheeks like blood.

Sherlock forced his attention back to his food. To swallowing it down along with the urge to reach and across and kiss John. To ask him to stay, once it was through, once they were safe and Below was free from fear, at least for a period of time.

 

//

“So why are they trying to kill you, and by default, me?” John asked.

A brief, entertained smile curved the corner of the consulting detective’s lips and John suppressed a chuckle by putting the last of his bread into his mouth. He’d need at least another ten minutes sitting down to digest a bit, though it felt good to have a full belly after so long walking through the tunnels with all his gear on his back.

“As I’m sure you gathered, killing people is rather their specialty. Along with other violent acts in the same vein, kidnap, torture, beatings. Moriarty is clever, certainly the brains of the pair. Moran is the muscle.”

“Well, they didn’t give the impression of being the saving kittens caught up trees sort,” John said. It was easy to assign the names to the faces John had seen with what the consulting detective had said. Moriarty the snake, Moran the wolf.

“I think it’s best if we don’t consider what they _would_ do to a kitten in a tree. It would not be pleasant. Just as what I believe they have in mind for me will be extremely unpleasant should they get to carry it out,” the consulting detective said bluntly and John had to admit, he had balls. There were plenty of people who’d be a crying, gibbering wreck just at the sight of Moriarty and Moran, let alone the thought of being tortured by them.

“So what you’re saying is, they’re mercenaries.”

“That is exactly what I’m saying,” the consulting detective confirmed.

John wasn’t even close to being surprised. It fit with their behaviour so far and everything John had thought, and suspected, when he’d first saw them on his doorstep. It didn’t take a genius, or the consulting detective to work out what their current job was. “And you’re on their list.”

“Correct,” the consulting detective said with a nod. He pulled a bottle from inside his coat that John hadn’t noticed him purchase and took a drink. “Though that is not where this all begins. Six months ago the first of the Seven Sisters was murdered. Within a month the Lady Serpentine was the only sister to remain and she has been in hiding ever since. There have been fifteen other high profile deaths, the last of which to my knowledge was the Lady Bethnal. I discovered her body shortly before you found me.”

John ignored the fact that it sounded like the consulting detective was picking places names off a London map and focused on the important facts. Everything else would have to wait until later. “All Moriarty and Moran’s work?”

“Yes, and they have been employed,” the consulting detective said again in the tone that spoke of facts rather than conjecture. He offered the half empty bottle to John. “It’s water, perfectly safe.”

John took it and drank. He hadn’t realised how thirsty he had been. The consulting detective continued.

“There is someone behind them, pulling the strings. Each person they have been contracted to kill is one of power and of standing Below. There is no government here, only a system of tribes and the balance of power and influence.”

“A coup,” John said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. ”I’ve seen what happens to leader-less tribes first hand. Anyone can just sweep in and take power.” 

“Yes,” the consulting detective agreed, looking impressed. John blamed the sudden surge of warmth in his belly on the food. “Whoever is behind this is attempting to cause disarray among the peoples of Below. Given the chance to unite, and to my knowledge it has only been done once before, the combined force of all the tribes of Below would be virtually impossible to overthrow.”

“So they’re going for divide and conquer.” Easy, and effective, so long as you didn’t get caught. Which was why they wanted the consulting detective out the way.

“There are enough remaining tribe members that suspicions are aroused, accusations are being made. Soon, there will be all-out war and when it’s over?”

Oh, but it was _clever_. Leave key and rival tribe leaders alive. Allow the suspicion to fall on them as the perpetrator. Sit back and watch as they start their own genuine war and then, “The bastard behind all this just steps over the bodies and takes over.”

“You are rather good at this,” the consulting detective said with a small, meaningful smile. John’s palms sweated in ways they never did when there was a gun, or a scalpel, in them. 

“Do you know who it is?”

“No,” the consulting detective said and there was no denying the frustration in his tone. After all, he was brilliant and he knew it. “I have a reputation for problem solving. I used to come to the market and trade answers for whatever I needed. _Is my husband cheating? Who stole my corpse?_ It’s been enough to sustain me and ever so occasionally challenge me intellectually. The Baron and the Lady Serpentine were aware of my skill for deduction and investigation, and engaged my services.”

“What did you find?” John asked, genuinely curious to hear more of the consulting detective’s deductions. Facts pulled as if from thin air, the idea of which still fascinated John. It was bloody amazing.

“That Moriarty and Moran were behind the murders and that like myself, they were being employed for their talents. They treat client confidentiality very seriously and when I failed to save three people from their hands, I turned my attention to their employer.”

“Doubt anyone was happy with that.”

“Hardly. Within two days they were hunting me. When I finally realised the Lady Bethnal was their next target I tried to reach her in time, but I was too late. They have studied me, just as they study all their _jobs_. They’ve ensured all my attention has been devoted to staying alive, to keeping one step ahead of them, as you have seen, they are the best at what they do.”

John nodded. They were good. They were _bloody_ good. Not that he expected anything less. It wasn’t just a job for men like Moriarty and Moran. It was a way of life. They trained and honed their skills, just as John had, only they took lives rather than tried to save them.

They’d gotten the measure of the consulting detective easily and had used it against him. Just like any professional. “They effectively stopped you from thinking about anything else. Is that why we’re here? To give you time to think?”

“No, I’m to meet with the Baron. Inform him of Lady Bethnal’s death if he does not already know and collect information the Lord of Raven’s Court has been gathering for me. Then we are leaving.”

“And where are we going?” John asked, looking at the hustle and bustle of the market and for just a moment, wanting to lose himself in it. He knew it was safer to slip away while the market was still in session, before Moriarty and Moran saw them. That didn’t change the little flare of want he felt at the idea of hiding with the consulting detective just a little longer, to walk and talk in safety.

“To see my brother, Mycroft.”

//

“You have a brother down here, too?” John said, his entire face painted with shock.

Of course, he was wrong, but Sherlock could almost understand how he came to such an erroneous conclusion. “No,” he corrected. “Mycroft is still Above.”

“Wait,” John said, little burrows marring his forehead that Sherlock told himself very sternly he did _not_ already adore. “I’m confused. I thought they couldn’t-.”

“They can’t,” Sherlock agreed. It was easy to spot where John was heading, after all, it had been Sherlock who informed him of the basic fact of life Below. You no longer existed Above. “Fortunately, my brother has never been like everyone else. All through our lives he has greatly enjoyed reminding me that there is only one person more intelligent in the world than myself, and that he was my older brother.”

“Are you telling me there’s another you?” John asked, amusement creeping into his features.

“Yes, only he is significantly fatter and less attractive,” he responded instantly. He was not going to have John’s interest, whatever it was, stray to his sibling, not even for a second. Especially not if Mycroft had actually been successful with the diet.

“I have not tested the theory until now, I’ve not had significant motivation, but I believe if there is anyone who can successfully bridge the gap between Above and Below it’s Mycroft. He is the only one with the mental capacity to see, and to remember, us.”

As much as Sherlock resented Mycroft’s controlling, overbearing attitude when they were growing up, he was counting on it working in his favour for once. He was the last resort.

“And how’s that going to help exactly?”

“My brother holds a position in the British government that allows him access to certain services that most people do not have at their disposal,” Sherlock answered, leaning in close to John’s ear to ensure they weren’t overheard.

John turned to Sherlock, so close Sherlock could feel, _taste_ John’s breath on his lips. “So we’re going to hide?”

Sherlock couldn’t suppress the shudder of excitement that ran through him. He didn’t pull away from John, but pressed in close until their shoulders were touching and his lips brushed John’s cheek with every word. “Essentially yes, not an ideal course of action but the only one left to us. I need both time and safety to think. My brother can provide them until I can accurately conclude who is behind this. Who it is that you and I must stop.”

“You and I?” John echoed and Sherlock could feel his body tense, that he was holding his breath.

“Yes,” he whispered into John’s ear and _hoped_. “If you will come with me. Stay, with me.”

//

John’s heart was racing. The din of the market turned to nothing as the consulting detective took over all his senses, flooded them with _want_.

There was no way that it was one-sided. It couldn’t be, not with the way he pressed close and begged John to stay with him.

John turned, leaned in with the word _yes_ and intention on his lips when a booming voice cut into the silence, so deep and loud it startled John to the core.

“There you are!”

The consulting detective pulled back and John almost fell flat on his face before he caught himself.

“We weren’t sure if you were going to make it, old chap!” The voice continued and it felt like John’s brain was rattling around inside his head with the force of it.

The consulting detective scrambled to his feet with a little less grace than he usually moved with, his face angry as he demanded, “Quiet. _Quiet_!”

John got to his feet, securing his pack on his back in case they had to make a run for it, before joining the consulting detective. The two men stood opposite him could not have been more different if they’d tried.

The man who’d done the shouting and was now attempting to whisper apologies was about the size of your average semi-detached house. John was certain he was a heart-attack waiting to happen and he had somehow managed to cram himself into a 1920s tuxedo that looked about three sizes too small for him. He was waving a silver-topped cane and was wearing a monocle. His whole face was bright red and sweaty and his head was covered in a mop of golden curls.

Any man standing next to him would have looked small, except his companion was slight even in comparison to the consulting detective. His face was sallow, long and thin with a sharp, beaklike nose. His clothes were perfectly fitted, a Victorian suit covered in what looked like a fine layer of dust and his short black hair was slicked back off his face. He watched John with intensity, while the larger man gave the consulting detective a look of deep admiration, not that John blamed him on that front.

“This is my associate, he’s a doctor,” the consulting detective said, drawing John into the conversation.

“Oh, oh my!” The larger man said excitedly, his eyes going so wide his monocle fell out and bounced off his massive stomach before he caught it. “A doctor you say?”

“Yes,” John greeted, offering them both his hand. “Pleased to meet you.”

The larger man took it in his own and the handshake he received was vigorous, sweaty, hot, and deeply unpleasant. He beamed. “What wonderful news, a doctor! We’ve not had a doctor in the Underside for at least twenty years.”

It took John a moment to process what the fat man was saying. There hadn’t been a doctor Below for twenty years? What did the people _do_? When they were hurt, when they were sick? If they had no one, and this bloke’s reaction was anything to go by, they wouldn’t care about a shaking hand or that he used to stitch squaddies back together.

The consulting detective cut in to John’s thoughts, introducing the men in front of them, “This is the Baron, and the Lord of Raven’s Court.”

 The Lord ignored John’s hand and even the consulting detective looked offended on John’s behalf. John hoped that wasn’t why he didn’t sugarcoat the news.

“The Lady Bethnal is dead. I found her body yesterday.”

The Baron looked genuinely shocked and upset, but the Lord’s expression didn’t change. He gave nothing away as the Baron sniffed loudly.

“Terrible, terrible news. The shepherds will be devastated,” the Baron said, pulling a large, lace-edged hanky from his pocket and blowing his nose loudly.

Both the consulting detective and the Lord had identical looks of disgust on their face.

“Here is the information you requested,” the Lord said as the Baron looked like he was preparing for another big honk. His hand disappeared inside his morning coat and pulled out an ancient looking notebook, which he handed to the consulting detective.

You’d have been forgiven for thinking was Christmas, the way the consulting detective looked to have it in his hands. “Thank you,” he said, stroking the cover. “This will help immensely.”

The Lord nodded and the consulting detective motioned to John and the bag on his back. “May I?”

“‘Course,” John nodded and turned to give him access. He let his eyes wash over the crowds of people in the market, surprised to see what looked like a stall selling nothing but rubbish.

Then he saw him.

 _Moriarty_.

//

It was only a glimpse, but John would know that smile anywhere. Vicious and gleeful and _deadly_.

“Time to go,” he said, leaving no room for argument in his voice. He took the consulting detective’s elbow and started to lead him away.

He began to struggle and the Baron and the Lord watched in obvious curiosity. John didn’t trust either of them, he didn’t trust _anyone_ , so he dropped his voice for the consulting detective’s ears only. “We’ve got company.”

//

It had been foolish to think that they would not be found, that the crowds of the market would protect them for any length of time. Sherlock had said it himself, it was important that they were not seen by Moriarty and Moran, that they were not seen _leaving_.

There was no choice now.

They could not allow Moriarty and Moran more time to follow them through the market. There were still several possible exits and if they moved quickly they might be able to get to one of them without being seen. If they were going to make it to Mycroft they required some sort of advantage.

Sherlock was extremely glad that John had his gun.

He made no apologies to the Baron or the Lord Raven, just took John’s hand and pulled him into the crowd.

//

John followed the consulting detective through the crowds of the market, ignoring the shouts and curses as they pushed and wound their way through people trying to go about their business. He looked _everywhere_ for Moriarty and Moran, eyes constantly scanning the hoards of people around them for any sign of the crisp blue suits, a snake-like smile or sharp, dangerous eyes.

John didn’t see anything, any hint of them.

They were trying to flush him and the consulting detective out. They’d meant to be seen by John and now they were hidden, watching which way they escaped and preparing to attack.

As soon as they cleared the edges of the market John took the gun and flicked the safety off. The consulting detective nodded in agreement, before pulling open a metal hatch John had never noticed on his visits to the Tate Modern.

“Inside,” the consulting detective instructed and John obeyed, climbing inside the hatch that was just big enough for him to fit through. 

It was two steps before he lost his footing, the metal floor giving way to a steep, slippery slope and it wasn’t just a hatch. It was a _chute_.

John hit the ground ten seconds later hard and with a thump. His arse hurt and he rolled out of the way just in time not to be squashed the consulting detective following him down and somehow managing to make it look classy.

“Come on,” he said, taking John’s hand and pulling him up.

“Which way?”

The consulting detective looked around and John had no idea how he was going to get them out of this one. They were in a metal and stone tunnel, so long that it seemed to fade into the blackness. Small shafts of light coming from tiny air vents at regular intervals along the ceiling tried to light the room, but did little in the gloom and John’s eyes struggled to adjust.

Between them were doors, and not just any doors. At least six inch thick iron ones opening into the tunnel that would turn each section into a room, into a vault, by the looks of the locks and levers to hold each one in place.

“This is where they used to store the coal,” the consulting detective said, as they ran. “The doors create fireproof chambers, to stop the whole place going up in case of an accident.”

Sirens went off in John’s head. “How strong are they?”

The consulting detective’s eyes lit up and John knew he was having exactly the same thought. “Strong-,” he started but there was a noise behind them.

The distinctive sound of one body, then a second, hitting the floor at the bottom of the chute echoed down the tunnel. Moriarty and Moran.

They didn’t need to speak, they both ran to the closest half open door and John chucked his pack through the doorway before throwing his whole weight against it. John pushed with all his strength while the consulting detective pulled from the other side, the door moving with an agonisingly slow creak and grind of decades-old hinges.

John could hear the footsteps behind him, approaching at an almost lazy stroll. They weren’t going to get the door shut in time. Moriarty and Moran knew it, were counting on it.

John’s heart was pounding behind his ribs so loudly he almost didn’t hear the consulting detective shout his name. Then a body, strong and lean and familiar was wrapped around him and they hit the floor together. There was a sharp pain in John’s right arm and the clang of metal hitting metal.

“Are you alright?” The consulting detective asked as laughter echoed down the tunnel.

There was a cooing laughter from further away as Moriarty teased, “How sweet, that he tried to save his little pet.”

It was Moran that was closest to them, then.

John sat up and felt the warm sting of blood on his arm. He pressed his fingers to it, found it was little more than a knick and he had the consulting detective to thank that it wasn’t any worse. There was a knife on the floor, just like the one John removed from the consulting detective’s shoulder.

“Shut the door,” John ordered in hushed tones, nodding at it behind them still half open. The consulting detective’s mouth opened, and John gave him a look that cut off any objections. “I need you behind me, keep working on the door.”

The consulting detective nodded and John waited for him to go. He took several deeps breaths and listened over the rush of blood in his ears and the thundering beat of his heart. Adrenaline thrummed through his system as he got up, gun a solid, secure weight in his hands.

There wasn’t enough light. Moran was only a blurry shadow and Moriarty was completely hidden in the darkness. There wasn’t a clear shot, not even for John.

They needed more time.

There wasn’t any choice.

He pulled the trigger. Moran groaned and Moriarty screamed, blood curdling and _angry_. Only Moran didn’t hit the ground, kept coming towards John and he fired again.

The shot echoed through the tunnel.

Moran went down and Moriarty was suddenly on his knees at his side, shouting and screaming incoherently as he put pressure on the wounds.

It was enough.

John ran.

//

Sherlock flinched as he heard the first shot, then the second. It was irrational to be afraid that John was further injured when he was the one with the gun and had already proved highly competent with it. Yet it was there, consuming his every thought as he did what he’d been instructed, what he needed to do to ensure their safety.

 _Close the door._

All he could think about was John.

Moriarty’s screams echoed through the tunnel and then John was there. He slipped through the gap, to the side where they would be safe, and threw his body weight into helping Sherlock pull the door closed.

Sherlock’s heart pounded with relief, with exertion, with _joy_ to see he was no more harmed than he had been.

Then the door finally closed with an almighty scrape and clang of metal on metal.

“They’re not dead,” John panted as they pushed and pulled the levers to secure the door into place. Of course, they could be opened on the other side but _everything_ gave them extra time.

“It was too dark,” John explained between ragged breaths, though he didn’t need to. Even a crack shot couldn’t have managed two fatal shots in that lighting at that distance, and still John sounded furious with himself. “I wounded Moran, Moriarty’s fine but seeing to him. It won’t be easy, opening this on his own.”

“Are you alright?” Sherlock asked, watching as John slumped back against the door. His own heart was racing as the adrenaline rush peaked and when John nodded he was flooded with relief.

They were _alive_. Moran and been shot and there was a door of solid, extremely difficult to move iron between them.

It was too much.

His knees gave out.

John caught him, strong hands at his elbow and waist, and asked: “Are you?”

//

The adrenaline was still rushing through his system, his blood and heartbeat pounding in his ears. John's skin, every nerve was on fire with sensation and he could feel everything. The flush and burn in his cheeks, the heavy rise and fall of his chest as he tried to catch his breath and ease the ache behind his ribs.

And _him_.

The consulting detective. John didn’t even know his _real name_ but he couldn’t bring himself to care.

Not with the long and lean but strong line of his body pressed against his own.

The consulting detective’s breaths were rapid and hitched, his cheeks were stained pink and there were beads of sweat gathering on his forehead. They were fitted together, from chest to hips, and all John could think about was how _good_ it felt.

John was crowded into the consulting detective’s space, backing him up against the cool iron door and he wasn't complaining. His eyes were wide, pupils dilated in the darkness and fixed on John's lips.

He was leaning in, and the consulting detective was moving to meet him. They were sharing each deep, rasping breath and all John could think about was how much he _wanted_.

"Sherlock," the consulting detective breathed. Words whispered against John’s lips. “My name is Sherlock.”

//

“Sherlock,” John echoed.

Then they were kissing. Only it wasn't so much kissing as devouring.

Sherlock didn't know who had closed the final, minute, distance between them. It didn't matter. Not when John had said his name as though it were the most important thing in the world and was kissing him as though it were ending.

There was no finesse. It was all tongues and teeth and need.

It was _perfect_.

Sherlock fisted his hands in the back of John's jumper, biting into his mouth as desire and arousal and adrenaline coursed through his system. He found himself _wanting_. John’s hands and lips and body, _everything_. More intensely than he had wanted anything since the drugs and it was like a physical blow to pull away.

 _More_ , he wanted _more_ but they were close. So very close to Mycroft, and _safety_ and once Sherlock had used the information from the Lord Raven and connected all the pieces, discovered and stopped whoever was funding Moriarty and Moran, they would have all the time in the world.

John wanted _this_. Sherlock. It was plain to see in the disappointment in his face as Sherlock pulled away, the hitches in his breath as they kissed, the desire in his dilated pupils and the telltale twitches of arousal in John’s groin.

It was heady and intoxicating. It had been so long since someone had wanted Sherlock for himself, who thought he was astounding. Molly had only wanted her image of him, someone soft and weak who would be devoted and indebted to her.

John wanted danger and brilliance and _Sherlock_.

He kissed him again, because he could, because he couldn’t stop.

When Sherlock finally broke away, the ache in his lungs from lack of oxygen too much to stand, his heart was pounding again and his chest heaved. John’s lips were red and kiss-swollen and desire sparked and shuddered down Sherlock’s spine. He wanted John to look like that for all time and only for him.

 _Soon_ , he promised himself. Soon it would be over and John would be his.

“We _are_ going to continue this,” Sherlock said, not resisting the temptation to speak the words against John’s lips. “And more, when this is over. We should move, that won’t stop Moriarty and Moran forever.”

“Three rounds left,” John answered. No apologies, or remorse as his right hand palmed Sherlock’s arse and the left returned the gun to the waistband of his jeans.

“One spare,” Sherlock said. He had complete confidence in John, that Sherlock would lead them and John would protect them. “We’ll reach Mycroft within the hour.”

“Well, best lead the way then,” John said, with a final quick and dirty kiss and then they were moving again.

It wasn’t just an incentive. It was a _promise_.

//

"Parliament?" John exclaimed, not exactly proud of the way it came out sounding more like a screech than anything else.

Though he felt it was somewhat deserved. Sherlock had led him through a winding maze of tunnels for over an hour since their run in with Moriarty and Moran. It had been impossible to keep himself orientated, even before Sherlock told him the geography Below didn’t match that of Above and he’d given up.

He’d followed Sherlock without question towards the brother that was supposedly going to keep Sherlock and John safe, enough for him to put all the pieces together. To put an end to all the death and then John would be able to do something about Moriarty and Moran, before they hurt anyone else. Not that Sherlock knew about that part of the plan. 

What John had not been expecting was to end up in a large, cavernous stone cellar. It was lit by paraffin torches and filled with wooden crates and a large stone and iron staircase on the far wall.

What had given away their real location was the sign John had spotted as they’d climbed out of the grate, which John presumed had once given Thames access. In his opinion, it didn't bode well that the sign said:

 _Robert Catesby_

 _Thomas Winter_

 _Thomas Percy_

 _John Wright_

 _Guido Fawkes_

 _Robert Keyes_

 _Hung, drawn, quartered. 1606_

Sherlock brushed the dirt and rust from his hands, and looked around the cellar with the look on his face that John was quickly learning meant he was _seeing_ everything. “Yes, we are currently below Parliament and we are about to go inside. Presuming that we are able, that is. This cellar was destroyed in 1834.”

John silenced the part of himself that wanted to point out that _clearly_ it couldn’t have been destroyed if they were standing in it. He licked his lips and took a deep breath. “One of those, makes sense if you’ve lived Below for five years, things yeah?”

A smile curled the corner of Sherlock’s lips before he was climbing the stairs, impossibly long legs taking them two at a time. John suppressed some truly filthy thoughts.

“I’ll teach you _everything_ , as soon as this is through,” Sherlock promised whilst giving John a look that practically screamed _hurry up_.

John obeyed, reaching Sherlock just as he pulled the large oak door open and light and _noise_ flooded into the dim. They were looking out into a large octagonal hall, with impressively carved walls and arches, ornate stained glass windows and four marble statues. John recognised it off the BBC News.

 _Sodding hell_ , they really were in Parliament. One of the highest security buildings in London and they were just about to go strolling around like they were invisible.

Except that they were. Only the last rational and desperately hopeful part of John’s brain shouted furiously that they weren’t. That either Sherlock, or John, or both of them were stark raving mad and about to get arrested.

Then Sherlock was off again, his long strides eating up the tiled floor and tailcoat swishing dramatically behind him. No one paid him any notice.

John took a deep breath, told the voice to shut up and ran after Sherlock.

//

“Mycroft’s office is upstairs, unless it has moved in the last ten years,” Sherlock said, leading John through the maze of stairs, corridors and grand halls that made up Parliament.

Sherlock doubted that Mycroft would have moved office, he would be in the same one as his father, and his father before him, when they held both the Peerage and the office. The biggest obstacle they would face was Sherlock's memory. He had only been to Mycroft's office once before and he'd been so full of cocaine it was a wonder he had been able to recognise Mycroft, let alone remember the route he had been led on by the MI6 agent sent to retrieve him from his squat in Brixton.

He realised with an uncomfortable start that they were on the wrong floor. Mycroft's office was on the fourth and top floor. The drugs had left Sherlock's memory of that period of time significantly less reliable than he was used to, or liked.

He did a u-turn and John stopped Sherlock with a hand on the crook of his elbow. "You didn't tell me your brother was an MP."

Sherlock chuckled at the image of Mycroft being elected into any sort of position. Popularity was never something Mycroft had been able to achieve, not when he was such an insufferably annoying know-it-all. “That's because he isn't."

"Then why are we running through Parliament?" John asked, his face suggesting he found this most ridiculous part of their recent activities.

It sent a sharp flood of affection, warm and tender through Sherlock’s chest.

"He's a member of the house of Lords, but his influence extends much further," Sherlock explained.

That Mycroft was a Lord was irrelevant, it just allowed Sherlock to easily locate him. It was his position whispering in ears of the government and the intelligence services that Sherlock required.

//

Inside Parliament was a maze. A really bloody ornate maze full of people who made both him and Sherlock look like right scruffbags with their mismatched, grubby clothes and muddy boots and in Sherlock's case, shoes and socks.

It was a bloody good job no one could see them, and their appearance was proof enough that they couldn't. If just one person walking around caught a glimpse of John or Sherlock it would have been obvious they didn't belong.

John even more so than Sherlock. Sherlock’s brother was a Lord and that made Sherlock... Well, John wasn't exactly sure of the titles but he knew it made him more than a bit posh.

It explained a lot. The way Sherlock held himself, the way he moved and the way he spoke. It was there, under the rough edges he'd gained from years of drugs, homelessness and finally Below.

John caught a fleeting glimpse of the Thames out the large windows that lined the hall as they dodged around all the suit-clad men and occasional woman. It was interesting that they were still solid Above, that although no one could see them they could still walk into John. He wondered if that would be enough to make him visible, noticeable for one of those fleeting, meaningless moments Sherlock had described. That was probably why Sherlock was being so careful of the people around him, when he'd done nothing of the sort at the Floating Market.

John followed Sherlock's lead. He stored the questions away for later, when it was all over and Sherlock and he had all the time in the world.

Sherlock continued to plough on through the labyrinth of corridors that all looked pretty much the same, occasionally turning around to take a different turn. The sense of urgency in every step they took had John's heart pounding in his chest, adrenaline thrumming through him.

They were almost there. Sherlock's brother would give them somewhere to stay and John would keep him safe. Then they'd go and stop whoever was behind it, and John would deal with Moriarty and Moran.

They'd make Below safe. Together.

//

Mycroft's office was as abhorrently grandiose as Sherlock remembered it and never would Sherlock have ever believed he would be so relieved to see it.

They had passed Mycroft's assistant without a glance. Her attention not leaving her Blackberry once as Sherlock pushed open the heavy oak door and stepped inside.

Sherlock’s heart pounded inside his chest, fear and elation and anticipation all coming crashing together in a flood of emotions he’d not felt with such overwhelming power in a very long time.

Mycroft looked up.

There was recognition in his eyes.

For just a moment, Sherlock thought he might collapse from the relief that rushed through him. Mycroft could _see_ him.

//

There was no mistaking that Mycroft could see them both. The minute Sherlock strode in to his older brother’s office like he owned the place, Mycroft’s head had snapped up and it’d been there in his eyes.

He _saw_ Sherlock, and then John, as he shut the door behind them, dropped his pack to the floor and came to stand next to Sherlock, their shoulders brushing.

It was enough of an earth shattering relief for John and he’d only suffered glances that washed over him without acknowledgment that anything stood in the section of air he occupied, for less than a day. He couldn’t imagine what it must have felt like for Sherlock, to have the complete, true recognition of another human being after five years. Not just any person either, his _big brother_.

“Sherlock,” Mycroft said with a smirk and enough amusement in his voice that it made the hairs on the back of John’s neck stand on end.

 _Instantly_ he did not trust Mycroft.

Even if he was the only person on the planet with a mind impressive enough to be able bridge the gap in the two realities of Above and Below, it had been five years. Five years since Sherlock had vanished and even longer than that since he had started taking the drugs, from what John knew.

The first emotion Mycroft should have been feeling was shock, or relief. He shouldn’t been looking so entertained.

“You look a great deal better than the last time you stood in this office.” Mycroft’s nose wrinkled. “Though perhaps not cleaner or better dressed.”

John tensed and wished that Sherlock could actually read John’s mind, could hear his concerns. Only one look at him out the corner of his eye and he could see that Sherlock was completely consumed by his relief. The relief that John wanted to feel, because they were here, they’d done what they needed to do and soon it would all be over and they’d be free.

Sherlock had assured him that with Mycroft they would be safe.

John’s gut told him they were far from it.

//

“Mycroft,” Sherlock breathed and willed his body not to start shaking under the weight of the relief and the gratitude he was feeling to his brother.

He ignored the slight on his appearance, the allusion to the drugs and his last visit. For once none of it mattered, there was nothing less important than goading Mycroft in return about his weight or his self-serving manipulations of the government.

Never before had Sherlock been so glad to be in Mycroft’s company and he knew his face, his entire being screamed it to Mycroft. He didn’t need to say it, but he _wanted_ to. “I’m glad to see you, _frère_.”

Mycroft chuckled, sitting back in his seat behind his large oak desk. Sherlock scanned the paperwork across it and there was only one piece actually related to his position as a Lord. There was the usual urge to comment and Sherlock suppressed it as Mycroft smirked.

“Do take a seat,” Mycroft offered, gesturing to the leather chairs on the other side of his desk, flicking off the computer screen before Sherlock was in a position to see what was on it. “Your friend too.”

“Ah, yes,” Sherlock said. He turned to John who for just one terrible second he had forgotten was there, caught up in Mycroft _seeing _him and the chance to be _safe_. Only John did not look relieved like he should, his shoulders were tense and his jaw clenched tight and for one moment Sherlock was completely lost. _Why_ was John not feeling the same as Sherlock?__

Perhaps he was disgruntled that Sherlock had forgotten about him, especially after what had happened between them in the tunnel. After all, John didn’t realise that Mycroft wouldn’t need to be told such things. He would already have deduced them.

“Mycroft, this is Doctor John Watson,” Sherlock said. The one thing Mycroft would not have been able to learn without more time, or help, was John’s name. “My friend,” he added for John’s benefit.

It was already apparent in Mycroft’s eyes he suspected that John meant something to Sherlock. Something significant.

He was correct.

//

“Pleasure to meet you,” Mycroft said to John and offered his hand.

John stepped forward and shook it politely, but firmly. Mycroft’s expression didn’t change. It was an all-knowing, not exactly benevolent look, with something that John did not trust for one second in his eyes.

“Sherlock-,” he started, no longer caring that this was supposedly their safe haven or that he might tip his hand to Mycroft. He needed to get Sherlock out of the office and tell him that there was something very, very not good going on.

Only Mycroft cut him off and John’s skin prickled.

“So tell me, little brother, what brings you to see me after so long?”

//

Sherlock told him.

He led John to the seats Mycroft had offered and accepted the water he poured for them, drinking down two glasses when he realised just how long it had been since he had put any decent amount of fluid into his overworked body.

Sherlock frowned at John, when he realised that his glass remained untouched, but Mycroft prompted him to continue.

Sherlock did. He told Mycroft of the most pertinent events of the previous five years, from when he had slipped through the cracks in the world to coming clean and establishing a reputation for himself and his skills. He sketched out in facts what he knew about Above and Below, how the worlds functioned both separately and together, sharing space and time, but hardly ever meeting.

Then, why he was there.

Nothing but the facts. No sentiment or compliments, neither of which Mycroft would approve of nor appreciate.

The violent and bloody deaths of the most powerful tribe leaders of Below, the people of most influence in the dark. Moriarty and Moran, the hired hands so clearly behind the murders but nothing but blunt, well paid instruments. His suspicions of motive, an attempt to abolish the tribal system for the sole purpose of gaining complete rule of Below.

A single person manipulating the people and ruling system of Below, all for power and control. A perpetrator he was certain he would be able to close in on, once Moriarty and Moran were no longer a factor. When all his energies did not need to be devoted to attempting to avoid them, trying to stay alive.

When Sherlock was finished he slumped back in his seat, as though a weight had been lifted from his chest. Mycroft was thoughtful, hands pressed together in mock prayer beneath his chin.

Then Sherlock considered Mycroft. Truly considered him and his complete lack of surprise or shock.

Mycroft had taken the news much more in his stride than Sherlock expected. He had prepared himself for more questions, more disbelief regarding the notion of Below. Like himself, Mycroft had always been a man of reason and science and facts.

Sherlock had suspected there might have been some accusations of it being a drugs-related delusion or hallucination. 

Something twisted and tensed in his stomach. He sat up straight and Mycroft was smiling.

Such easy acceptance was not right.

//

Mycroft was smiling by the time Sherlock finished and John’s blood was running cold. His fingers were gripping the arms of his chair hard enough his knuckles had turned white.

The sense of dread he’d been feeling ever since Mycroft had first spoken was nothing compared to heavy weight of foreboding that now sat in his stomach.

“Well done,” Mycroft finally said, with a slow, mocking clap of his hands.

John could see Sherlock out the corner of his eye, all the relief gone and his whole body one, tense line.

“Sherlock,” John said, standing. They were leaving, he was going to _make_ them leave. They would be safer on their own. He had no doubt about that.

//

It all happened in a second.

The oak panelling behind Mycroft’s desk was hiding a door. John barely had a second to recognise that he was surprised when it revealed Moriarty and Moran behind it.

Moran’s shoulder and arm were wrapped in blood soaked bandages and there were bloody stains all over both their suits and shirts.

“Fuck,” he cursed. Sherlock was frozen in the seat beside him and he pulled the gun from the back of his jeans and flicked the safety off.

They needed to get out and they need to get out _now_.

Then Moriarty was moving, and snarling, “I’m going to kill him.”

John had just enough time to recognise the look of cold malevolence and _murder_ in his eyes before Moriarty crashed into him. There wasn’t even time to aim, let alone shoot and the gun slipped out of John’s hand, skidded across the floor.

Then John joined the gun on the ground, hitting it hard.

For someone as lean and small as Moriarty, he tackled like the biggest, meanest Prop John had ever met playing rugby. John’s whole body ached and he couldn’t catch his breath as Moriarty straddled him, eyes gleaming like a mad man before the first blow fell.

John’s jaw ached and his head throbbed. The only thought he could process was that it was _Mycroft_. He didn’t know how and he didn’t know why, he didn’t really care, he just knew the person Sherlock had thought was going to save him was behind this.

And Sherlock needed to run.

Moriarty and Moran had been sent to kill Sherlock. _By_ Mycroft.

“Run!” John shouted, as Moriarty hissed and snarled threats and promises of pain and that he would give Moran his bloody insides as a gift, and then hit him again. _“Sherlock, run!”_

//

Sherlock was frozen.

His body wouldn’t move as his mind attempted and failed to process what was happening. John was shouting, screaming at him to run but his legs wouldn’t move.

The nameless, faceless villain Sherlock had been chasing was _Mycroft_?

His pompous, fatuous, _brilliant_ older brother was the one controlling Moriarty and Moran? He had been ordering the deaths of the leaders Below…. Had _he_ known it was Sherlock’s death he was ordering?

“When you came bursting in, so dramatically, little brother, with your little guard dog I rather thought you’d finally worked it out. Imagine my surprise when I realised you came here to plead for sanctuary. Rather poor decision, that one, hmm?”

“Sherlock, stop listening to him and _run_ ,” John roared, breaking through the haze of shock and horror Mycroft’s words were holding him in.

Moriarty had hauled John into one of the wooden chairs in the corner of the office. There was a knife between his teeth, the identical partner to the one Moran had embedded in Sherlock’s shoulder just the day before. The one John had already escaped once that day.

John cried out in pain as Moriarty tied him to the chair, with a thin thread he pulled from inside his jacket. Sherlock knew it instantly as chain made by Hammersmith. John would never break free from it.

Moran was blocking the door, and even wounded, Sherlock doubted his ability to get past him. Not while Moran was grinning at Sherlock, clearly looking forward to any excuse to inflict further pain on him.

“You hurt him,” Moriarty hissed in John’s ear. “You shot my beloved. Twice,” he emphasised his displeasure at the number with two long, deep cuts down John’s neck.

“Sherlock,” John groaned, looking over his shoulder to meet Sherlock eyes. “I’ll be fine. Go. Now. _Please_ ,” he pleaded.

Moriarty dragged the knife across John’s already bruised cheek, blood welling in its wake.

Moriarty was going to kill John.

Sherlock _couldn’t_ leave, even if he was able to.

“Mycroft,” Sherlock begged, turning to his brother. Hoping that somewhere, there was still a trace of the young boy Sherlock had once adored and idolised, who had doted on him in return. “Mycroft, _please_ , make them stop.”

“I can’t do that, Sherlock, I’m afraid,” Mycroft said and he didn’t sound at all sorry. He didn’t care. He didn’t care that Moriarty was going to kill John, slowly and painfully, didn’t care that John’s life meant something, _everything_ , to Sherlock.

“Why?” Sherlock demanded, pain and fury rising like bile from the very depths of his being as John bit back another cry and Moriarty cackled in gleeful pleasure.

“Because you didn’t help me, little brother,” Mycroft said and Sherlock was certain his knees would give out. How could _this_ be his fault? Mycroft had everything, he always had.

Mycroft took a sip from the teacup on the edge of his desk and Sherlock couldn’t stop himself from shaking with rage, with disappointment, with fear.

He didn’t know what to do. He had not been so lost since he fell.

//

John tried to focus on his breathing, to keep each rise and fall of his chest steady and regular. It wasn’t easy. Even if he was trained for this, it had been a long time since he left Sandhurst and half a year since he was in combat.

The training came back, but not easily. Not when Moriarty was carving pieces into him and Sherlock wouldn’t do to the sensible thing and get the fuck out of there.

Whatever was holding John was solid and strong and there was no way he was getting out of it. If it had been a rope, he might have stood a chance, but not a chain with a lock. That was more Sherlock’s area and he was understandably distracted.

John bit back another groan of pain as Sherlock begged Mycroft to stop his torture. Moriarty was getting off on it and John would be buggered before he gave Moriarty any more sick, twisted pleasure than he was already getting from it.

Then he focused on Mycroft. Listened to what he was saying, the excuses he was trying to give to Sherlock for what he had done. What he was doing.

“You see, Sherlock, I had plans for you. Such big, important plans and just like when we were children you simply refused to do what was good for you. When I had you brought here all those years ago, I already knew about the Underside. I wanted to see if you would fall through, and when I saw you I knew. Of course, you always work to your own schedule, don’t you Sherlock? Not only did you take too long to fall, but even longer to get clean, despite the provisions I put in place for you. Yes, don’t look so shocked. Molly was put in place and do you know, for a time there she wouldn’t tell us anything about you, she was so taken with her poor, broken charge. Then you spurned her and it took time, too much time, for her to come out of hiding but she told us. All about you.”

//

“You _used_ me?” Sherlock said, though he wasn’t sure how he managed to force the words out.

He had not thought it could get worse than learning that Mycroft had ordered the deaths of so many, that he would go to such lengths to be the most powerful man in London, Above and Below.

He had _betrayed_ Sherlock.

His own, his _only_ brother.

Mycroft smirked cruelly as Sherlock’s whole body trembled. “Did you never think it odd, little brother, that after you escaped from rehabilitation I never sent you back? You were going to help me take over the Underside, you were going to be rewarded, but you took too long. You hid yourself, and I was forced to look into other avenues for achieving my goal. I have never been a patient man.”

“Avenues such as ourselves,” Moriarty said proudly, and Sherlock watched as he traced the wound dripping blood down John’s cheek with the tip of his knife. John flinched and his nostrils flared, but he made no sound. “A satisfaction-guaranteed service and no pesky, sibling unreliability.”

Sherlock knew he did not need to ask if Mycroft had known it was Sherlock investigating the deaths when he sent Moriarty and Moran on his trail. It was written across Mycroft’s face, screamed out by his body language. Moriarty and Moran had not used Sherlock’s name when searching for him, whether they had not known it or merely been told not to didn’t matter. It had been the same end. Mycroft’s attempts to ensure that Sherlock did not discover that _he_ was behind it all, that he was willing to kill his brother for control of the Below.

Mycroft, who sat on the other side of his desk with an impassive smile, watching as Sherlock’s world fell to pieces once again and John was tortured.

Sherlock dropped to his knees and vomited, a mixture of water and bile that burned the back of his throat.

He saw Moran’s feet move out of the corner of his eye and Mycroft snapped, “leave him.”

Sherlock took a moment to collect himself, to try and push down the rush of emotions warring inside him for dominance and allow himself a chance to think. It was up to him to end this. To stop Mycroft, Moriarty and Moran, and to save himself and John.

Then he saw it.

The _gun_. John’s gun.

It lay abandoned on the floor between himself and Moriarty. Moriarty was close, but Sherlock had the advantage as long as he had the element of surprise. Moran was behind him, even further from the weapon than Sherlock.

He faked another retch and lurched forward.

Moriarty’s eyes snapped to the gun.

Sherlock moved.

//

John’s heart pounded in his chest as Sherlock leapt across the carpet towards the gun. Moriarty dropped the knife, abandoned his torture of John and made a grab for it.

He was too slow off the mark. Sherlock had the gun. Held it in hands so steady they could have been John’s.

John wondered what Sherlock was going to do with it, now that he had it. There were three possible targets. Mycroft was the most obvious choice, being the one behind it all, but would Sherlock be able to point a gun in his brother’s face and mean it?

John wasn’t sure he wanted him to be able to. 

Sherlock turned. Not to Mycroft, but to Moran and barely a second after the gun was in his hand it was aimed at Moran and Sherlock demanded in the coldest tone John had ever heard from his lips. “Don’t. Move.”

//

Moran froze.

Mycroft offered an attempt at pacification as he stood and moved around from behind his desk, “Sherlock.”

“I said, don’t move. That includes you, Mycroft,” Sherlock said and he stilled at the edge of Sherlock’s peripheral vision.

Moriarty hissed, a wild, animalistic sound. Sherlock turned again, keeping Moran in the gun’s sights and Mycroft in his own.

Then he saw Moriarty and it felt as though his heart had stopped.

His hands were carefully placed on John’s head and chin and he was grinning, furious and excited at once. Sherlock could see in John’s eyes that he understood. He was in the army, of course he understood.

One swift movement and careful application of pressure and John’s neck would be broken.

“Put the gun down,” Mycroft instructed. He used the same tones he had when Sherlock was a child and was throwing a tantrum, when he’d fallen and scraped his knee.

It might have meant something. Before.

“Let John go,” he ordered Moriarty.

“Put that down, or I’ll-”

“Less talking Moriarty,” Mycroft roared. “I have had enough of my brother causing a scene. Now would you two do your jobs and kill them both!” 

It was enough for Sherlock’s attention to slip.

Moriarty threw his knife to Moran, who caught it and was instantly moving towards Sherlock. Moriarty licked his lips in anticipation and reached for John, who ducked and struggled as Moriarty went to snap his neck. 

//

There was only a second to choose.

Only, there never had been any choice to begin with.

Sherlock pulled the trigger.

//

Mycroft hit the ground.

Everything stopped except for the blood pooling on the carpet and on what had been an impeccable three-piece suit.

Moriarty’s hands went lack, probably in shock, and John heaved a shuddering sigh of relief.

Sherlock’s hand was shaking and all the colour had dropped from his face. John struggled against his bonds. He needed to go to Sherlock. Right now.

Sherlock had just-.

 _Fuck_.

Sherlock had just shot, _killed_ , his brother. John had failed to save him from Mycroft, from the truth. He needed to get Moriarty and Moran out of the picture for good and take care of Sherlock. Give him whatever he needed.

//

Sherlock knew the moment the shock wore off from Moriarty and Moran. Moriarty was moving back towards John and Moran’s grip tightened around the knife, ready to strike.

“Stop,” Sherlock said and resented that his voice was shaking.

John was still in danger, _he_ was still in danger and the only way for them both to get out alive was to reason with Moriarty and Moran. Not an easy task to begin with, even less so when they were both out for blood.

He moved the gun between the two of them, until they both took a step back from their intended targets.

“Good,” he said, getting himself more under control.

There was time to fall to pieces later, to give in to the emotional response demanding his attention. Once they were safe.

“Now, I imagine I am correct in assuming that you have not been fully paid for services rendered.”

Sherlock knew for a fact that most contracts undertaken by Moriarty and Moran were paid half up front, half upon completion. What Mycroft had employed them for would have come with a hefty fee and they liked being paid as much as they liked violence.

“No, we were supposed to get another payment once we’d given your big brother your head and his heart on a platter,” Moriarty sneered, with a nod towards John.

Anger flared, hot and bright in Sherlock’s chest and he swallowed it down. “I know both the location and the combination of the safe in this room. I will give you all the valuable contents, even if it is above the full rate my brother promised you. On the condition that it ends, that no more of the deaths ordered are carried out, including myself and John.”

Moriarty was clearly considering his options.

Sherlock pointed the gun at him and made the choice significantly easier. “Or I can shoot you both.”

//

“Love?” Moriarty said to Moran. John could see in his eyes he wanted blood, he wanted vengeance for the shooting in the tunnel.

Moran nodded.

They wanted to live more.

Sherlock was on the edge, he had just killed his brother and it wasn’t a great leap to believe he could kill two strangers who’d been hunting him for weeks.

“We’ll take the payment,” Moriarty said and it was a lie.

John knew it down to the very bottom of his bones that Moriarty was lying, that Moran approved. The deaths of the tribe leaders might stop, but John and Sherlock, no, that was personal.

Nothing was going to stop Moriarty and Moran killing them the moment they had the upper hand.

John said nothing, remained still as Sherlock ordered Moriarty to release John and the lock and chains were removed. John stood, heart still thumping behind his ribs and adrenaline flooding his system.

“Here,” John said, slipping the gun from Sherlock’s fingers as Sherlock rushed to his side, assessing the injuries that John could barely feel as anticipation made everything sharp and numb.

“I’m okay,” he said, stepping away from Sherlock.

Moriarty had moved to Moran’s side and was fussing with the bandages now soaked with fresh blood.

John looked at them both. Moriarty’s eyes flashed with realisation.

He pulled the trigger twice.

Moriarty, then Moran, hit the ground with heavy, dead thumps and bullet holes between their eyes. No chance of escape or recovery.

Moriarty and Moran were dead. He and Sherlock were safe.

It was just self-defence in advance.

The only regret John felt was that he hadn’t pulled the trigger for Mycroft too, and taken that responsibility away from Sherlock.

//

It took Sherlock’s brain a long moment to process what had just happened.

It was sluggish and slow and he had a suspicion that meant he was in shock. If there was ever a series of events worthy enough to put him into shock, he had just been through them.

Two shots, John’s face emotionless and strong, Moriarty and Moran’s dead eyes and blood and brain matter all over the wallpaper.

“Are you hurt?” John asked, abandoning the gun on the edge of Mycroft’s desk before he turned back to Sherlock.

John was covered in blood. There were cuts to his face and neck and collarbone. Yet his hands were searching over Sherlock’s body, with careful measured touches looking for any trace of harm, when it had been John who had suffered.

“I’m fine,” he said, his eyes drawn to the lifeless bodies of Moriarty and Moran.

“I had to,” John said softly. “They were only going to let us live while we had the advantage. They were going to kill us, it was the only way.”

“I know,” Sherlock replied, something terrible and unbearable clawing inside his chest. “I know,” he said again, voice shaking as he tried to swallow it down. To lock it away where he would never have to acknowledge that he _understood_.

He understood.

He had shot Mycroft.

 _Killed_ his brother.

Suddenly his face was wet. He barely felt it as his legs gave in and he hit the ground.

//

All he could see was Mycroft’s body. Lifeless eyes staring at him in accusation and stained in blood. There was blood everywhere.

Then John was next to him. He wrapped Sherlock in his arms and pulled him bodily to him, until Sherlock was practically in John’s lap, held tightly with his face buried in John’s blood-stained jumper.

He could feel his shoulders shaking, his chest heaving as it all exploded out of him. Everything he had pressed down and locked away inside since before the drugs.

It was impossible to breathe.

John held him tighter. He whispered, “I know,” into his hair. He was warm and solid and Sherlock clung to him, to the comfort. “You had to, I know you had to.”

John didn’t promise that it was going to be alright, did not promise that it would get better, all things that Sherlock could not believe. Not in the face of Mycroft’s horrific betrayal. Not with the weight of his brother’s death, his _murder_ , on his shoulders and the sight of his body whenever he closed his eyes.

Instead, John kissed the crown of his head and promised something that Sherlock wanted to believe, _needed_ to believe instead. “I’m here, I’m not going anywhere.”

//

John held Sherlock as he shook and trembled and sobbed out the pain and guilt and sorrow. He whispered careful promises against his skin and waited.

Then the room burst into life.

The door swung open with an almighty crash and four policemen charged into the room in full gear and stopped as soon as soon as they saw the sight before them.

There was a gun abandoned on the floor and three dead bodies, one shot to the chest, two expert shots to the head.

Their eyes didn’t even stop on John and Sherlock, curled up together on the floor of the office, amongst the sea of bodies and blood.

“Time to go,” John said softly as the police backed up and shouted orders into their radios and someone in the distance screamed. He didn’t want to test the protection that Below gave them, how unseen they would be if one of the officers tripped over them. How quickly they would forget two possible murder suspects.

Sherlock looked up, pale face still wet with tears and smears of blood from John’s jumper and wounds. It took a moment for recognition and then realisation to set in for the events unfolding around them.

He nodded slowly, “Yes, we should go.”

John pressed a careful kiss to his forehead before extracting himself from around Sherlock. He stood, and offered Sherlock his hand.

//

Sherlock took a deep breath, reached up and clutched John’s hand like the lifeline it was.

He followed as John led, vision blurry and eyes watery, but he trusted in John. Trusted in the warmth of his hand against his own and the steady beat of his pulse at his wrist until they were outside and the cool autumn air burned his cheeks.

//

John could see the traces of dried tear tracks on Sherlock's face, running through the dirt and grime to show hints of his smooth, pale skin. His eyes were red and starting to swell, and John pretended he didn't see that either.

Sherlock was looking down at the Thames as it rushed and lapped against the banks below them heedless of how the entire world had just shifted around them forever. John had killed three men in less than twenty-four hours, and fallen through what Sherlock called the cracks in the world, becoming even more nameless and faceless than he had been when he returned from the war.

It was _nothing_ compared to what Sherlock had been through. Running for weeks on end, and then finally turning to the one person he trusted only to be so betrayed. John could barely comprehend how low Mycroft had stooped.

His hands clenched into angry, involuntary, fists just at the thought of what Mycroft had done to his brother, what he'd been willing to do. Just for power.

Then Sherlock's hand covered John's. His long blood-stained fingers curling around John’s own until he turned his hand over and laced them together. Sherlock squeezed softly and John could feel a shudder of tension run through him.

John stopped looking. He allowed Sherlock to compose himself again and listened to the sounds of the traffic along the embankment rather than the sniffs and snuffles Sherlock was clearly trying to contain.

London slowly turned dark, the sky a deep and foreboding indigo that promised more rain and the skyline became bright with lights of all colours and the hazy yellow glow of pollution. Sherlock’s breathing was steady and even, though they’d both started to shiver in the cold.

Big Ben chimed behind them marking the hour.

It had only been twenty-four hours since Sherlock had woken on John’s sofa and tried to leave, tried to spare John all of this. At the fifteen-minute chime it would mark when had John made the choice that changed both their lives.

John had drugged Sherlock and pulled himself into the world of the Underside, become an unexpected citizen of London Below.

He supposed that he should regret it, that most people would. He would never speak to his sister again. He would never get to properly thank Bill Murray for slinging John over his shoulder and saving his life. He would never see his regiment again and daylight would become a novelty, something to be sought out.

Yes, most people would regret it.

John looked at Sherlock and knew he wouldn’t be alive, if a little battered and broken, if John had let him walk out his front door.

Given the chance to replay the last twenty-four hours over again there were plenty of things that John would change. Following Sherlock was not one of them.

//

It was impossible.

All the evidence pointed to the contrary but it _wasn’t_ possible. It _couldn’t_ be possible.

Everything he had ever said about no such thing as impossible, all the dismissive snorts and scornful tirades about whatever is left, no matter how improbable must be the truth were wrong. All wrong. They _had_ to be.

There was another explanation for what had just occurred. There _must_ be. He was still dreaming, drugged into a fitful sleep on John Watson’s sofa. It was a hallucination caused by lack of oxygen to the brain as the Golem’s giant hands crushed his windpipe. Moriarty and Moran had already killed him and this was hell.

It was better than the alternative. Than facing the notion that Mycroft had-.

That Mycroft would-.

That he had taken his brother’s life.

Sherlock swallowed down fresh tears and the bile that rose up into the back of his throat. He was covered in Mycroft’s blood and who would tell Mummy? Who would take care of her now? He bit back another sob, desperate to escape.

Mycroft would go into the ground and Sherlock would go back under it. The last of the Holmes line. Sherlock’s chest became suddenly tight and each breath was a deep, hard struggle.

He wanted to convince himself it was all a lie. That he was wrong. But the pain in his chest couldn’t be denied. The knowledge that the Holmes line, Mummy’s pride, had died at hands of Mycroft’s manipulation and betrayal was irrefutable.

Mycroft had betrayed him. Betrayed Sherlock, his little _brother_ , and now they were both gone. Sherlock had trusted Mycroft, put all his faith in a childhood memory of a brother who could fix anything and knew everything.

A brother who had sent Sherlock into hell, and ordered his death for no other reason than wanting more power.

All that was left was his guilt and Below.

And John.

Doctor John Watson.

The only person Sherlock was able, was _willing_ , to trust. The only person to have earned it since he fell through the cracks into London Below.

The only person he _wanted_.

The sun set and the world continued to move around him. London Above went about its business as if nothing had changed. For them, nothing had. They wouldn’t see the two men, covered in blood, sat on the edge of the Thames in front of Parliament, holding hands. One desperate not to let go.

//

Big Ben chimed the hour again.

It wasn’t just John’s fingers that were numb with cold anymore, but pretty much most of his arms and legs too. The only part of himself he could feel were the small patches of warmth where Sherlock’s hand touched his own, clammy from holding on for so long.

He clenched his teeth against the chattering they were threatening. Medically, he knew it wasn’t the right thing to do – chattering teeth was movement, it would create warmth, keep him awake – but he didn’t want Sherlock to feel pressured to leave. He would give him as much time as he needed, and wouldn’t let go of the hand in his own until Sherlock pulled away.

"I have a home," Sherlock said, as if he knew what John had been thinking. "I found the missing sister of an opener called Door, she paid me for my services by creating a door." His voice was scratchy but level and John allowed himself to look at Sherlock, properly, again.

"To where?" He asked, as he studied Sherlock’s profile, so pale he almost glowed in the artificial light of the streetlamps. Twenty-four hours ago John would have been brimming with questions about opening doors with magic and creating locks out of nothing, but it didn’t really matter anymore. There was plenty of time for questions, to learn about the Underside.

Sherlock on the other hand…

John didn’t know what Sherlock wanted, now that it was all over for him. He didn’t need protecting anymore. He didn’t need John. He might not want him either, a walking reminder of all that had happened, of the death of his brother.

An adrenaline driven kiss and promise of more didn’t mean anything. Not really. Not when two people barely knew each other, no matter how much John wanted it to mean something. Wanted Sherlock. Wanted that breathily promised _more_.

"A small flat, it was once 221b Baker Street but there was a gas explosion, and it slipped through the cracks. The Lady Door created a lock and a key for me, ensuring it stays my own."

John couldn’t help but wonder. "Why didn't you stay there? When Moran and Moriarty were chasing you?"

It was selfish, but John was glad Sherlock hadn’t stayed in the flat that slipped through the cracks. Sherlock would have been safe, he never would have been stabbed, he never would have found out about his brother’s betrayal and he’d never have learnt what it felt like to take a life.

He never would have met John.

It made him a fairly deplorable person.

He didn’t regret it. He couldn’t bring himself to.

"Because they discovered its location and I could not have stayed inside indefinitely. I couldn’t have outlasted them, but it’s safe again now," Sherlock answered sadly, eyes tracking a small party-boat that bobbed past them on the river, full of lights and laughter. The bright blue of the fairy lights around the edge of the deck were reflected in Sherlock’s eyes and John was certain he saw regret in them as well.

Of _course_ Sherlock regretted it. His entire world had been turned upside down and John Watson’s affection wasn’t even close to any sort of consolation. 

"That's good,” he offered as casually as he could manage. “That you have somewhere to go. I don't imagine I could put you up again. If I've vanished from existence up here, I can't see my flat staying empty for long. It was a dump, but it was a cheap dump. Should be interesting."

As much as he was reluctant to let Sherlock go, John didn’t want him to feel obligated to stay with him any longer. He had to give Sherlock the chance to cut all ties to John, if that was what he wanted, no matter what John felt. He had to stop being selfish when it came to Sherlock. It wasn’t the time to be thinking about himself, he needed to think of Sherlock instead. Give him time and space and anything else he wanted.

"I wasn't-,” Sherlock started, eyes snapping up to John’s. “I didn't-,” he tried again but continued to fumble. There was frustration written all over his face, but the sorrow was still in his eyes as he took a long, deep breath. “What I mean to say is, I have a home.”

Sherlock paused, almost nervously and his fingers tightened around John’s. He took another deep breath. “If you would like to come with me. I would like you to stay."

While his heart was beating madly inside his chest, thumping out a desperate rhythm of _yes_ and _please_ he didn’t answer. John wanted to accept, wanted to laugh and smile and kiss the dirt and tears from Sherlock’s face at the possibilities he was being offered. Only it seemed like such a struggle for Sherlock to say the words, to make him the offer.

“John?” Sherlock prompted, as John warred with himself. Fought between the desperate desire to take anything Sherlock offered him, just to be with him, and caution.

Was the offer so difficult to make because Sherlock was afraid John would say no? Or because he was asking out of some misguided sense of obligation, because he tipped John over the edge into Below and there was nowhere for him to go?

John wanted Sherlock, wanted to build whatever had started between them in that tunnel, but not out of obligation. Not out of pity. John Watson had been on the receiving end of enough pity to last a lifetime.

"We've barely known each other for twenty four hours,” he said cautiously, lightly. Giving Sherlock a chance to think better of the offer and retract it.  “Are you sure you want to me to come and stay with you?"

Sherlock snorted and something close to a smile curved the corner of his lips. "And you knew me even less when you shot a man to save my life. The _first_ time."

The mention of John’s first murder shouldn’t have lightened the mood, but it did. John was unable to stop himself from laughing, a low and weary chuckle, because Sherlock had a point. John had barely known Sherlock, hadn’t even known his name when he’d pulled the trigger and killed the giant.

He would do it again in a heartbeat.

"He wasn't exactly a good man,” John offered with a shrug. He motioned at Parliament with his head, adding, “And neither were they. No matter which way you argued with them, they weren't going to let us live. Even if they didn't kill us today."

It would hardly have stood up in court, but he was pretty much beyond the reach of the British justice system. The only judge he had to answer to was himself, and while taking a life was never pleasant, it had been necessary. The Underside, the world he and Sherlock lived in, was going to be safer for what he had done. _People_ – and not just themselves – were going to be safer for what he had done. It was enough to let him sleep at night, he was certain of it.

“Stay, John,” Sherlock said softly, his fingers tightening around John’s again.  “Please, I want you to come home with me and stay. Of course, if you would rather not continue our association, I can assist you in finding somewhere safe and comfortable to stay, and then leave you in peace."

Sherlock’s offer to leave John sounded like the last thing he wanted in the world. John felt his heart flutter at the tremor of fear in Sherlock’s voice, and the way he refused to meet John’s eyes. The offer was genuine, John didn’t doubt that Sherlock would be a man of his word and leave John be if he asked, but not because he wanted to.

Whatever Sherlock felt, it wasn’t pity.

Hope flickered warmly into life in the bottom of John’s stomach, sending his insides churning as he rushed to reassure Sherlock. "No. No, I want to. I _want_ to come home with you, I do. I just didn’t want you to think you _had_ to.”

Sherlock looked up at John and there was just a hint of something other than sadness in his eyes as he gave a dry laugh. “Perhaps now would be a reasonable time to reinforce that I do _nothing_ unless I want to. So do stop being such a gentleman, as despite the last twenty-four hours being deeply unpleasant, it has one thing in its favour. It has brought me _you_ and I’m rather keen on the idea of not letting you go.”

“Alright then,” John agreed and didn’t suppress the urge to smile wide and happy as he stood, Sherlock’s hand still warm in his own. “Let’s go home. Get you cleaned up and warm.”

Yes, the last twenty-four hours had been pretty much the most FUBAR in John’s life – and that included an ambush and getting shot – but something had come out of it. Something good. Sherlock. Him _and_ Sherlock. It would be stupid to let that go.

Sherlock climbed to his feet and stood pressed close to John’s side. He looked over his shoulder towards Westminster tube station and seemed to be deep in thought for a moment before declaring, "We'll ask the Earl to take us."

//

The Earl – or at least, the man John presumed to be the Earl - said nothing when Sherlock stepped in to the darkened carriage it the in middle of the tube, the one that all the other late night passengers avoided. The sign above the platform in Westminster station proclaimed it to be a District line train to Wimbledon, but John had learnt enough about the Underside not to make the mistake of thinking what was the same for Above was the same for Below.

He didn't ask Sherlock about it. There was plenty of time for that.

Sherlock looked around at the expectant faces and simply said, "It's over."

The Earl, sat at the end of the carriage, took in Sherlock's bloodied and defeated appearance for a moment before nodding. Then the train doors beeped, closed and they were moving.

John reached up and grabbed onto the yellow rail above his head with one hand. Holding on tightly against the motion of the speeding tube he wrapped his other arm around Sherlock's waist.

Sherlock swayed into John, unbalanced and exhausted looking. His shoulders were heavy under the weight of everything he'd been through, as he slumped against John and hid his face in the crook of his neck.

The entire – and impossible - journey to the Baker Street station was made in silence.

The other people in the carriage, the dwellers of the Underside lurked at the edges of John's awareness. Silent. They wanted answers, but followed the example of the Earl and his quiet contemplation of the scene before them. They didn't ask any questions. Just watched Sherlock and John with expressions of curiosity, fascination and awe.

//

Sherlock led John straight through the graffiti covered tunnel wall below Baker Street tube station and felt some of the pressure lift off his chest. He was home and safe and he had John Watson with him. To stay.

The weight of the Earl’s stare had unsettled him. Brought him the unpleasant realisation that there were going to be questions. The Underside, the remaining tribe leaders, would want answers and Sherlock was for once uncertain as to how to proceed with the truth.

Could he truly tell them that it had been his own brother? That his place in their society had been a part of his elder sibling’s master plan to control Above and Below, through his depraved puppets?

“Tomorrow,” John said softly, his hands warm and solid against Sherlock’s shoulders as he pushed off his tailcoat. Clever, steady fingers started to unbutton his waistcoat, then eased his shirt from where it was tucked into his trousers. “Worry about it tomorrow.”

Sherlock nodded in agreement, allowed John to step forward, press in close as he eased off the waistcoat before dropping it onto the sofa and starting to thumb open his shirt buttons. John’s breath was warm and damp and just a little sour against his cheek, and if Sherlock breathed in deep he could catch the smell of John, beneath the blood and the sweat and Above and Below.

It was comforting and distracting.

 _Perfect_.

Sherlock curled one hand around John’s waist, pushed his fingers up under his jumper and the waistband of his jeans. Sought out the hot, soft skin of his belly and let the contact ground him, remind him that he still had something good come from the disaster.

John would be there tomorrow, and hopefully every day after. He would help Sherlock find the right answers to give, hide away in the world Lady Door had secured for him until Sherlock was ready to face the Underside again.

Until he had processed the events that even a brain like his, fast and significantly more detached than your average, was desperately attempting to ignore.

“Where’s the bathroom? We’re going to clean you up, then it’s bed for some rest,” John said, interrupting Sherlock’s thoughts and sounding so much like a doctor that he couldn’t help but chuckle.

“Doctor’s orders?” He asked, thumb stroking over the sharp curve of John’s hipbone.

John nodded, brushing back Sherlock’s hair. “Doctor’s orders.”

//

The water was so hot it burned Sherlock’s skin on first contact. He hissed, as the aches and pains he had been going to great trouble to ignore existed made themselves very well known.

Running for one’s life was hell on pretty much everything.

“You alright?” John asked, from the other side of the shower curtain where he was tending to the wounds Moran had inflicted on him in Mycroft’s office.

It was fortunate John had kept his medical kit. Sherlock could hear the occasional sharp intake of breath that indicated John was using the bathroom mirror to stitch the deepest of the cuts. Treatment that Sherlock’s meagre first aid kit – inherited from the original owners of 221b – could not have even hoped to provide.

“I’m fairly certain you should be concentrating on yourself currently,” Sherlock said as the sharp pain in his shoulder settled down into a steady, low, throb and he favoured his uninjured side to wash. It was after all still less than two days since he had been stabbed.

“I’m done now,” John said after a moment’s pause, and then pressed. “Really, are you alright in there?”

“Perfectly fine,” Sherlock assured him, almost entirely certain it was true in the physical sense at least.

Emotionally, the less he thought about the events of the last twenty-four hours the better.

“Shout, if you need anything,” John offered before the bathroom door opened and then clicked shut again.

Sherlock hung his head under the rush of water from the showerhead and let it wash everything away. John was waiting for him.

//

John investigated the small flat while Sherlock finished showering, his bag abandoned on the end of the leather sofa once he’d pulled a fresh pair of boxers and a t-shirt from inside. Sherlock had forced him into the shower first and it was nice to be clean, if sore and tender in more than a couple of spots.

It was _almost_ like being Above, as long as he ignored the parts of the flat where it blended into Below. The patches of wall that faded from wallpaper to Victorian brickwork and the empty, black space outside the sash windows when he looked past the reflection of the sitting room.

There was a kitchen, the table covered in what looked like science experiments, abandoned when Sherlock had gone on the run. Books lined the bookcase, stacked so high that their weight bowed the shelves. On the wall a yellow smiley face grinned back at him and the mirror above the fireplace was covered in scribbled notes, maps and sketches.

The lights worked and the electric hum of the bulb was loud in the quiet of the room. John stared up at it for a moment and wondered how the bloody hell a flat that had fallen through time, and space, had working electricity.

“You should know better than to stare directly at that,” Sherlock said, making John jump. He hadn’t heard him coming. “You are a doctor, after all.”

Sherlock stood leant in the doorway, his damp curls dripping onto the light blue pyjamas he’d dressed in. His face was pale and the smudges under his eyes a dark purple. The bruises at his throat from the giant’s attack were already deep and angry looking against his clean, white skin.

“Speaking of which. They didn’t hurt you, did they? Moriarty and Moran?”

Sherlock shook his head and John studied him for a moment, attempting to work out if he was telling the truth or not.

Sherlock pushed away from the doorframe, and crossed over to where John was stood. Where he’d been perusing the titles on the bookcase and attempting to decipher which ones belonged to Sherlock rather than the previous owner of the flat.

Then Sherlock was in John’s space, the closest he had been since they’d kissed in the tunnel and it felt like a lifetime ago, even though it had only been hours. Long, careful fingers curled around the nape of John’s neck and then Sherlock kissed him again.

It was nothing more than a soft, tentative press of lips on lips and the sharing of warm, slow breaths. Sherlock’s eyelashes brushed John’s cheeks and his hands moved to Sherlock’s waist, solid and _real_ under his touch.

“Come to bed,” Sherlock whispered against John’s mouth. “Please. With me.”

“Are you sure?”

Sherlock kissed him again and taking his hand, led John up the stairs and into the bedroom.

//

The room was lit by a small lamp in the corner and smelled like Sherlock. The bed was an unmade heap of sheets and blankets and there was a mixture of more books and clothes scattered about the floor. Sherlock untangled himself from John to shut the door behind them and doubt, deep and gnawing crept in.

Without the warm, distracting form of Sherlock pressed against him it was impossible to ignore. Should he stop this before it went any further?

Of course he wanted Sherlock. How could he not want Sherlock? Sherlock who was attractive and brilliant and _wanted_ John, and did he mention utterly _brilliant_?

That didn’t mean thinking with his cock was the right idea.

Not after all that had happened to Sherlock in the past few hours, not after what he’d learnt and had had to do.

He wanted Sherlock for keeps. Not just for sex Sherlock might end up regretting, or worse, resenting John for.

"Stop it," Sherlock said. His lips brushed the shell of John's ear as Sherlock's calloused, dexterous fingers curled around John's waist and worked their way back under his clothes to stroke circles against his skin. Each firm, but gentle press lit up sparks in John's nerves. "Stop thinking, _questioning_. I want this. If anyone is taking advantage, it's me. I want you to distract me and I want us both to enjoy it."

"Sherlock-"

"Please do not ask me to be more explicit about what I require at this moment. We have plenty of time for that, tomorrow and all the days after. For now, take me to bed and fuck me."

It was impossible for John to deny him. Not when his voice was a low, needy rumble against the quickening throb of John's pulse. When the unmistakable evidence of Sherlock's growing arousal was pressed against him.

Sherlock wanted this. Had _said_ he wanted this and for more than just one night.

"John," Sherlock breathed, scraping his teeth over the curve of John's jaw. It sent a shudder of _oh god_ and _yes, more_ through him, and chased away the lingering voice of moral complaint at the back of his head.

"Yes," John gasped and gave in. He turned in Sherlock’s arms and then they were kissing again.

 _Really_ kissing and it was messy, all teeth and tongues and _so fucking good_. It was as if a fire, all hot, desperate need, had been lit inside of John and it burned right through him. His heart pounded in his chest and blood rushed in his ears, all to the tune of Sherlock’s name.

Sherlock’s hand, which had been so dexterous and careful, fumbled with John’s clothes. He tried to push John’s t-shirt up and underwear down at the same time and growled, a deep, vibrating sound of frustration into John’s mouth when he didn’t get anywhere.

John laughed between kisses and tangles of tongues, dragged himself away from the tempting heat of Sherlock’s mouth and tugged his t-shirt over his head.

“Better?” He asked with a grin, biting at Sherlock’s bottom lip before stripping him of his pyjamas carefully, mindful of the still fresh wound in his shoulder.

“Better,” Sherlock agreed, chest heaving as John just stepped back and looked.

 _Really_ looked, studied each inch of Sherlock’s skin on display, just for him. His lean, muscled frame, smooth, pale chest, slender waist and sharp hips. His cock, already hard and just begging to be touched and sucked and stroked until Sherlock came gasping John’s name.

John couldn’t pull his eyes away.

“Like what you see?” Sherlock teased, though John didn’t miss the flash of fear, of self-doubt in his eyes.

“Lay down,” John instructed softly, pressing reassuring kisses up Sherlock’s neck to his lips.

Sherlock did as he was told, taking two steps back and settling back on the bed, resting on his good elbow. He watched John through lowered eyes as he pushed his underwear down and stepped out of them and John could feel his cheeks flush at the intensity of Sherlock’s gaze. His eyes obviously moved up and down John’s body, lingering on his cock before sweeping back up. John felt the same as how he imagined Sherlock had; the way John always felt the first time he was naked with someone, only now there was the bullet-scar - the spider web of white, ragged flesh that marred his shoulder.

Sherlock nodded at John and asked, “Why aren’t you kissing me?”

John laughed and Sherlock smiled slyly, the nervous tension suddenly gone. It was replaced almost instantly by a different, much better kind, as John leaned down and kissed Sherlock, long and slow and dirty.

“While I can’t imagine lube and condoms being for sale at the floating market, please tell me you have some,” John said when they finally parted. His fingers curled in Sherlock’s hair, and one of Sherlock’s hands stroked over his chest.

As much as he wanted Sherlock, he was still an army doctor and he wasn’t going to do anything without either.

“The advantages of being unseen above,” Sherlock said, nipping at John’s earlobe before rooting through the set of drawers beside the bed. “It makes shoplifting from Boots incredibly easy. However, these are not new. It has been some time.”

“I’m sure I morally disapprove of using our powers of invisibility to shoplift,” John joked, checking the expiry date on the condoms and feeling a rush of overpowering relief to find they were still good.

“I give it three months before your moral qualms are silenced for good,” Sherlock retorted, smirking.

John wanted to wipe the look off his face, certain he was right, and so kissed him, before easing him back onto the bed and settling between his legs. Heat and electricity sparked as they touched from head to toe and John groaned. He rocked his hips into Sherlock, fitted their cocks together and greedily swallowed the needy, throaty moans escaping from Sherlock with each press and slide.

John set a slow, teasing rhythm, drinking in all the little hitches of breath and low whines Sherlock made as he moved with John, tried to demand more with each increasingly desperate rock of his hips. Then he stopped, swallowed Sherlock’s whimper of complaint with a lazy tangle of tongues until they were both breathless.

“John,” Sherlock gasped, cheeks flushed with arousal and skin hot and damp with beads of sweat.

“Shh,” John soothed, pressing open mouthed, biting kisses along Sherlock’s jaw, and down his neck, avoiding the marks the giant had left.

John catalogued every moan, shiver and shudder of desire. Sucked a love-bite to the soft, sweat-slick hollow of Sherlock’s neck just to hear the choked noises he made for John. Then he moved down. Kissed the smooth, pale skin of Sherlock’s chest, licked and teased each nipple in turn, smiled around them as Sherlock’s hips pushed up, demanding.

John soothed a sharp nip to Sherlock’s hipbone with lips and tongue, watching the way Sherlock’s face contorted in pleasure, curls clinging to his forehead and the smudges of his eyelashes against his cheek.

John shifted on the bed, but didn’t let his eyes leave Sherlock’s face as he curled his fingers around Sherlock’s cock, flushed and slick with precome, and stroked slowly. Once, then twice.

Sherlock’s eyes flew open. “Fuck,” he moaned. “ _John_.”

“You’re amazing like this,” John breathed, meeting Sherlock’s eyes. His pupils were dilated so far John could barely see his irises as he stroked Sherlock, oh so gently, pressing wet, teasing kisses across his hips and belly.

“Don’t,” Sherlock gasped, sounding desperate and on the edge of breaking. “ _Please_ , don’t tease.”

“Want to learn every inch of you,” John said greedily, nosing at Sherlock’s belly button. “Find out what else makes you incoherent.” It wasn’t so much a suggestion as a promise. John didn’t just want to know, he _had_ to know how to make Sherlock a desperate, horny mess under his touch. How to do as he asked and make him _forget_ anything except John’s touch and the need to come.

“ _Yes_ , yes,” Sherlock whimpered as John circled his thumb over the head of Sherlock’s cock. “Tomorrow, any time you like,” he started. John’s fingers moved down and rubbed teasingly over his entrance. “ _Oh god John_ ,” Sherlock whimpered, hips pushing down into the touch before he recovered himself. He demanded firmly, “Not tonight. Not now. Please, _please_ , I need you to fuck me. Right now.”

John’s cock twitched, the ache in his balls and the deep, desperate desire for Sherlock was impossible to ignore anymore. Not when Sherlock was begging, palm cupping John’s face and pulling him up for a kiss, messy and wet and pure want.

“Yeah,” John agreed into Sherlock’s mouth. Fumbling blindly with the lube until his fingers were covered with it and he could open Sherlock up with careful touches and teasing presses to his prostate.

“Ready,” Sherlock said, skilled fingers shaking as he slid a condom onto John. He made the world go white with hot, sharp pleasure as he stroked his length with lube slick fingers. “John, I’m _ready_.”

Long, lean legs wrapped around John’s waist. He pulled Sherlock into a kiss and eased in.

//

“Yes,” Sherlock breathed against John’s lips, and he opened Sherlock around him with one careful, steady thrust that set every nerve in Sherlock’s body on fire.

John was all that mattered. His skin, hot and slick with sweat against Sherlock’s. His chest heaving and hitching with each breath he huffed in and back out, ghosting across Sherlock’s cheek. Inside Sherlock, leaving him full and desperate for more.

“John,” he gasped not caring just how broken and _needy_ his voice sounded in his own ears.

John rolled his hips and there was nothing left in the world other than their bodies, moving together.

//

Sherlock was hot and tight around John. The feel and taste and smell and sound of him consumed all of John’s senses and all he could he could think about was Sherlock. Never letting him go. Never letting _this_ go.

“John,” Sherlock whimpered and just the sound of it sent shivers of pleasure and _pride_ through John. That he could do this to Sherlock, _for_ Sherlock.

John leaned down, pressed his mouth to Sherlock’s and swallowed all the gasps and moans of his name with hard and dirty kisses. Chased the taste of Sherlock, licked it from his mouth as Sherlock’s fingers pressed hard into John’s spine. Then moved lower to grab his arse, to try and force him deeper, harder.

“More,” Sherlock demanded, biting at John’s jaw and rolling his hips up to meet John’s thrust. “ _Please, fuck,_ more.”

John was helpless to deny him.

He pulled Sherlock closer, shifted the angle of his hips and saw, _felt_ the moment he pressed against Sherlock’s prostate. Sherlock’s moan was soundless as it shuddered through his body and into John’s.

“Fuck,” John choked out, curling one hand around Sherlock’s cock. “Sherlock.”

All that came out of Sherlock in response was a jumble of desperate sounds as John worked his cock with long, firm strokes in time with each press into Sherlock’s body. He stopped holding back, stopped thinking, and moved on instinct with each moan and gasp and push of Sherlock’s body.

He let the heat of orgasm build in his stomach and pressed wet, open-mouthed kisses to each inch of Sherlock’s skin he could reach.

“John, John, _John_ ,” Sherlock chanted, his breath catching in the back of his throat with each hard press of John’s cock against his prostate.

John knew Sherlock was close. His whole was body was trembling, pushing into John’s hand and his thrusts. He pulled back, watched as with one final stroke Sherlock came with a low groan that was John’s name.

It was enough to send John falling over the edge. Orgasm hit him hard as he kept moving inside, in time with Sherlock, until everything was white around the edges and his whole body thrummed with pleasure.

The only word on his lips was _Sherlock_.

//

The endorphin rush was _amazing_.

Sherlock couldn’t remember a time when sex had been so good. When he had wanted it, _needed_ it, so much or enjoyed it so thoroughly.

His chest heaved almost in time with John’s as their bodies worked through the aftermath of the physical exertion and the effects of orgasm. They were both damp with sweat and Sherlock’s entire body felt warm and soft, as though he were on the edge of melting.

John made a gurgled noise of contentment and Sherlock could feel the smile on his face stretching his cheek muscles until they ached. Then John’s arms were around Sherlock, tugging him in close for a lazy, affectionate kiss and a warm embrace.

All Sherlock could think about was John.

All he wanted to think about was John.

He mouthed _thank you_ against John’s lips and his heart seemed to swell inside his chest when he felt _anything for you_ against his own in reply.

//

"You think I'll ever get the hang of this?" John asked, running his hand through Sherlock’s tangled curls.

Sherlock’s breath was warm and damp against John’s chest with each of his steady exhales. It was a pleasant feeling. One John wanted to get used to.

Sherlock tilted his head to look up at John. His pupils were dilated so wide his eyes seemed almost black in the low light of the bedroom and there was a curious curve to the corner of his lips.

Of course he knew exactly what John meant. That as the endorphin rush started to wane the reality of John’s situation was really beginning to settle in. His entire life Above was gone and even if this flat Sherlock called home – that John _would_ call home too – looked like it belonged up there, it didn’t.

At the bottom of the stairs you didn’t step out into the rush of Baker Street, but through the cold, damp stone of an ancient wall into the dark of Below. John didn’t even begin to know how to live his life in a world where he didn’t know the people, or the rules.

"I'll help you," Sherlock said, without a moment’s thought or hesitation. He shimmied up John’s chest and his mouth watered, just a little, at the expanse of smooth, pale flesh before him. All for him. To touch and lick and kiss whenever he wanted.

“I’ll show you,” Sherlock promised, brushing his lips over John’s.

John’s whole body sparked and buzzed with pleasure and desire and hope.

 Sherlock had believed in John and John had kept him safe, saved him from Moriarty and Moran, even if he couldn’t spare him his brother’s betrayal. Sherlock was offering himself in return, to keep John safe.

He thought about the Floating Market, all the people to discover in this new world, all the people who needed help. Sherlock’s, and his own. The Baron had said it, after all. They didn’t have a doctor, but they needed one.

John would fix their bodies. Sherlock would solve their mysteries and lead John through Below with a sly smile and the mad, addictive rush of adrenaline.

There was never a chance he was going to refuse.

"I know you will," he replied.

Then he kissed Sherlock, and believed him. 


End file.
